Stranger
by Bunnyapocalypse96
Summary: A young girl starts appearing at different intervals in time. Who is she and why does the Doctor find her so eerily familiar?
1. Chapter 1

**Author's note: Yes, I know - some of you have seen this fic before. Owing to technical difficulties (namely my sucky technological skills) I had to remove the previous copy I published of this fic. I saw this as an opportunity to do a little polishing here and there on the story. To those of you who have been following the story and know a little bit more of it, don't have too many sleepless nights... I'm a quick updater and you'll get a better story at the end of the day!**

**Now, let me quit bothering you so you can start reading!**

**...**

**Part 1**

Once upon a time, there was a girl called Amelia Pond. She lived in a big, vast house all on her own. Amelia was a brave girl who wasn't scared of any strange noises or funny shadows that she saw while alone at night.

No, there was only one thing that Amelia was truly scared of.

A crack in her bedroom wall.

One evening, a strange man visited Amelia. She found him outside in her garden. That night, the strange man came to dinner. Afterwards, Amelia showed him the crack in her wall. Even though he tried to be brave, Amelia could see that the crack scared him, too.

The man then told Amelia that he would take her on an adventure. She was very by excited the prospect of this thought. The man told Amelia to wait for him, and she did.

Amelia waited for a very long time.

On a different night, Amelia awoke with a fright.

She had heard a noise. It wasn't the noise the tree branches made when the wind made them scratch her window, or the sound the stray cats outside made when they knocked over a rubbish bin. This noise was more sinister, more— alien.

Amelia immediately knew where the noise had come from, though she wished she didn't. She sat up cautiously in her bed and looked up at the crack in her wall.

Since the raggedy man had visited her, she had been even more scared to near the crack. Adults weren't supposed to be afraid of things unless they were truly dangerous, after all.

Not that the raggedy man had been entirely like the other adults, though.

The noise that woke her was still there. It was almost inaudible, but now that she was paying attention, she could hear it.

The crack was humming.

Amelia swallowed back the fear rising in her throat and put her bare feet on the floor. Pushing away the blanket she had slept under, she pushed herself into a standing position and made for the crack.

Nearing it warily, Amelia confirmed it; the humming was definitely coming from the crack. Only it wasn't humming, she abruptly realised, it was something entirely different to that.

She was hearing voices.

This prickled her curiosity and made her fear take a backseat. There were people in there. Amelia had the burning desire to determine whether the people were friendly or not.

Or whether they were people at all, for that matter.

She was so close to the crack now that she could almost make out what the people on the other side were saying, but not quite.

They were shouting; she knew that much.

"H—Hello?" She tried nervously.

There was no answer.

Amelia reached out gingerly to put her hand on the wall. She then leaned in to put her eye to the crack, trying to see what was on the other side. As soon as she did this, however, the voices were abruptly cut off.

Thinking she did something wrong, Amelia pulled back. She frowned as the crack became seemingly dormant once again.

She was just about to turn around, go back to bed and forget that this had ever happened, when something in her peripheral vision made her spin back around.

The crack was emitting a faint, golden glow.

"What in the world—?" Amelia said to herself. Then, in a flash, she was suddenly flung backwards as the glow exploded into a bright light.

She hit the opposite wall of her room with a grunt. Barely having time to recover, she became aware of something blocking out the light from the crack and casting a large, ominous shadow over her. She gave a whimper of fear and pressed herself against the wall in a desperate, if futile, act of self-preservation.

Whatever the thing was, however, it didn't make a move towards her. Instead, it chose to slump to her bedroom floor with a huge huff.

The light from the crack died away as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving Amelia to stare disbelievingly at the hulking shadow on the floor in the darkness.

For a moment, there was utter silence in the room. Not a sound escaped Amelia's lips, nor did the shadow make any attempt to speak. Her eyes adjusted slowly and Amelia became aware of the fact that the shadow was considerably smaller than she had initially thought.

Much smaller, in fact.

In the silence and the darkness, Amelia got quite a large fright when the shadow promptly decided to move. It also uttered a small, childlike whimper.

Amelia didn't know what to make of this sound. Her eyes had, by this time, adjusted fully and she could just make out a puff of light hair on top of what she could only assume was the shadow's head. She slowly started to inch towards the thing.

"Hello?" she asked, just as she had before. After a moment of silence, she prompted: "Are—are you hurt?"

So swiftly that Amelia didn't even have time to compose herself, the shadow suddenly popped into a sitting position. There, her eyes widened as she took in her surroundings.

Finally, her eyes fell on Amelia.

"Who are you?" the girl asked.

The girl was younger than her, Amelia noticed. She looked to be about five or six years old. Her hair was in messy knots on top of her head and she had wide, inquisitive eyes. She was very pale and, above all, very scared.

"Where am I?" she asked again, the panic now clear in her voice.

She was in her pyjamas.

As tears started to form in her eyes, Amelia tried to calm her. She reached out to take the frightened girl's hand. "It's alright," she told the girl, "You're going to be fine. What's your name?"

The girl opened her mouth to answer, but just as she did this, her eyes widened fearfully.

"I can't remember," she gasped.

Amelia frowned. This night was turning out to be too bizarre to be true. She had a lurking suspicion that she was dreaming.

"What do you mean you don't remember?" she asked the girl, "Where did you come from?"

The girl looked to be on the verge of tears, again. "I don't know," she whispered, "I can't remember anything. Who are you?"

"I'm Amelia," she answered.

The girl looked up at her. Seeing her, _really_ seeing her, for the first time. Her mouth popped open into a little "o" of horror and she jumped to her feet in a flash.

"What's wrong?" Amelia asked.

The girl didn't answer; she just kept on slowly backing away towards the bedroom door. As she moved she shook her head slowly from side to side in mute horror.

"What's—" Amelia was about to ask again, but then she was stopped in her tracks.

There was a faint glow in the girl's eyes. The exact same colour the crack had glowed just before spitting her out. The glow slowly intensified and Amelia looked on as the girl stared at something that wasn't in the bedroom.

"No!" the girl shouted, reaching her arms out towards that something, "Amy, please!"

The glow died as suddenly as it came. Without another word, the girl spun on her heel and bolted out of the bedroom door.

Amelia Pond never saw the girl again.

In coming years, she would write this specific encounter off as a simple childhood nightmare.


	2. Chapter 2

"A pit stop?" Clara implored, "I didn't think thousand-year-old time machines would need to stop off at a garage. Thought you aliens would've solved that problem by now."

"The TARDIS doesn't need 'to stop off at a garage'!" The Doctor said, mildly offended at the idea, "Every now and again she just needs to get parked by the time rift to—you know—recalibrate."

"And that time rift's in Cardiff?" Clara asked, still mildly sceptical about this specific piece of information, "Cardiff, Wales?"

"That's right," the Doctor said, fiddling with the nobs and switches on the TARDIS console, "We'll just pop in and then be on our way. Don't want us getting—noticed." He shifted his eyes nervously from side to side as if just landing the TARDIS already stepped over the boundary of being too conspicuous.

"Noticed?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. She didn't like it when the Doctor was so cryptic. She had been travelling with him all of a few months now, yet he was still so obscure and indecipherable to her sometimes.

"Yes," the Doctor said, straightening his bow-tie uncomfortably, "Let's just say that some doors should be left unopened for as long as possible."

Clara shook her head. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew that she would never get a clear idea of who exactly this man was. Unfortunately, another part of her knew that that was part of his allure.

The TARDIS grinded to a halt and the Doctor patted the console affectionately. "There you go, old girl, fill her up."

For some reason, Clara somehow felt the need to avert her eyes when the Doctor talked to his machine like this; as if she was bearing witness to some sort of personal moment between the two of them. It didn't help that the TARDIS had taken to treating her like an intruder, either.

"Right let's g—oh!" Before the Doctor could finish his sentence, the TARDIS suddenly gave a violent shake, sweeping both he and Clara off their feet in the process. When he came into a sitting position, the Doctor realised that all the lights in the console room had gone dark. The only source of light in the room was the console board itself, giving off a dull, eerie glow.

"Doctor?" he heard Clara call not too far away from him, "What happened?"

"I've no idea," he said as he got to his feet. He helped Clara to her feet, as well.

Looking around for what might have caused the crash, the Doctor couldn't help but notice the heavy tension in the air. It felt like the moment before you knew that something bad was going to happen. The moment before two approaching cars collided or watching helplessly as the glass of milk tipped over and tumbled to the floor.

The tension was so ominous that the Doctor found himself shifting his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other, waiting for the ball to drop.

Clara had in the meantime moved closer to the Doctor, the heaviness in the air putting her on edge, too.

It was the pressing darkness, however, that was pushing her edginess over the threshold to fear. Were the shadows in the console room getting deeper, or was it just Clara's imagination?

She desperately wanted to know what was going on.

"Doctor," Clara's voice sounded loud in the silence. She had spotted something on the floor, "What's that?"

As she pointed it out, the Doctor's eyes widened in surprise. He made no move to pick it up, instead choosing to stare at it blankly. There was no way someone would leave something like that in the TARDIS by accident.

"Doctor?" Clara inquired, seeing that the colour had drained from his face.

When he still didn't respond, Clara went forward and picked the rose up. As she returned to his side, the Doctor grabbed it from her hand and stared at it in his.

"What does it mean?" he asked quietly. Clara started as she heard the underlying agony in his voice.

"Nothing," a different voice said behind them.

They both spun around to see the girl that stood there. She looked to be in her early twenties—Clara's age, the Doctor noted—she had long, golden curls and large, dark grey eyes. She was extremely beautiful.

She wore denim trousers with a pair of trainers and a light blue jumper. Nothing impressive there, except for her rather out-of-place accessory.

The Doctor eyed the vortex manipulator around her arm.

"What do you mean 'nothing'?" he asked the girl suspiciously.

She gave him a dazzling smile. Clara heard the Doctor give an audible gasp as he saw the smile.

"Just a little distraction, is all," she assured him, "The roses are exceptionally pretty this year. I thought I'd pick one for you, seeing as they're your favourite flower and all." It was as if she was sharing some sort of personal joke with the Doctor, Clara thought.

The Doctor didn't seem to find it funny, though.

"What are you doing in my TARDIS?" he asked her darkly. Clara still couldn't understand what the source of his anger was.

"I'm not in your TARDIS," she said mysteriously as she perched on one of the jump seats. She seemed to be enjoying herself.

The Doctor shook his head incredulously. "What? Of course you're in my TARDIS! Look, here I am, there you are and all around us, my TARDIS!"

As he gestured and ranted, the girl watched on with a bemused expression on her face. She had in the meantime taken to luxuriously lounging on the jump seat instead of simply sitting.

"—and furthermore, Clara and I had just landed in Cardiff when you, out of nowhere, went and turned out the lights! So, in conclusion, you are most certainly, most definitely _in my TARDIS_!"

The girl rolled her eyes, entirely unfazed by the Doctor's anger. She swung her feet onto the floor and got up. She walked over to the Doctor coolly and leaned in as if to whisper something in his ear.

"Except I'm not," she said, a playful glint in her eye. Then she sighed, apparently bored with her little game.

"Boy, for a genius you sure are thick," she muttered, "We're in your mind, Doctor. I just thought you and Clara might be a little more comfortable in surroundings you knew."

"What?" the Doctor asked, for a moment thrown by her unexpected answer, "How'd that happen?"

The girl sighed again and clicked her fingers lazily. Abruptly, the console room disappeared and was replaced with a deep, dark abyss.

Clara looked around her at the open space with wide eyes. The darkness seemed to stretch on into forever.

"Oh, sorry," the girl said, putting a hand to her face in mock-distress, "I forgot to ask whether Clara was allowed inside. I lose track as to how much you reveal about yourself to whom."

Clara caught the faint trace of bitterness in the girl's voice.

Before the Doctor could answer, the girl shrugged her shoulders spitefully. "Oh, well. I suppose there's no changing the plan now. She's already here, after all."

"Who are you?" the Doctor asked, not playing along with the banter that the girl was orchestrating.

Catching on to his attitude, the girl gave another smile. This one, however, was more mischievous. It was like the smile of a child who had been caught getting into trouble, but knew they would never get punished for it.

"The question is, Doctor," she said cryptically, starting to pace around where the Doctor and Clara stood, "Who are _you?"_

The Doctor's expression turned confused. He glanced down at Clara as if to see if she had understood something he hadn't.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Well, you see," the girl said, stopping in front of the two, "I've been doing the rounds inside your head and I've got to say—"she gave a charming chuckle, "It's been quite entertaining."

Before the Doctor could respond to this, the girl was addressing Clara. "Do you even realise how much time this man spends thinking about you?" She asked.

Clara felt a hot blush creeping into her cheeks and ears, but the girl ploughed on.

"Not in the way you think," she reprised, "sorry," she added with a flinch when she saw Clara's face fall ever so slightly.

In the darkness, a large image of Clara appeared. Clara realised that the image was a memory the Doctor must have had of her, though she couldn't remember ever wearing the Victorian dress the image depicted her in.

"Stop it," the Doctor said quietly, his hands and teeth clenched, "This isn't the time or the place."

The girl ignored the Doctor's words and instead looked at Clara wondrously. "You are an anomaly, aren't you?" she said dreamily.

Clara couldn't help but notice that there was something strangely familiar in her manner.

"And such a good distraction, wouldn't you say, Doctor?" she looked at the Doctor and her eyes went hard once again, "The perfect way to forget about past failures is by taking on an exciting new project, isn't that right?"

This seemed to anger the Doctor even further. "I said stop it," the menace in his voice made Clara bristle a little by his side.

The girl's gaze dropped to one of the Doctor's clenched fists. "Still holding onto that, then," she said, nodding towards the rose, "Careful, you're going to hurt yourself."

The warning was justified. The Doctor's fist was clenching down hard on the thorny stem of the rose. Clara noticed the almost inaudible flinch that the Doctor gave when he relaxed his hand a little.

"He ever tell you about her, then?" the girl asked Clara, expecting her to catch on immediately. When Clara shook her head confusedly, there was anger and an underlying hurt in the girl's eyes.

She met the Doctor's gaze fully for the first time. The Doctor felt a shiver run up his spine as he detected the unidentifiable familiarity that lay there.

"I bet you didn't," she said accusingly, "I bet you've put the memory of her far away in your mind, behind a door that you never open. That's what you're good at, isn't it? Forgetting."

The Doctor's hearts gave a squeeze as he heard the words. She was right. He didn't want to think about any of it. Not the hurt, not the guilt and most certainly not the joy. The joy was the worst, because it was one of the things, in this day and age, that he missed most about times past.

"Doctor," Clara was desperately in need of some clarity. She didn't have the faintest idea of what was going on.

Who was this strange girl and what on earth were they talking about?

"Haven't you ever wondered who it was that the Doctor loved, Clara?" the girl asked her. She glanced over to make sure the Doctor was listening. She seemed to be purposefully trying to spite the Doctor. "The answer might surprise you."

The Doctor was shaking his head, advising her mutely not to answer the question, while all the while keeping his eyes trained on the girl. Clara's curiosity got the better of her, though. She had truly wondered about the answer many times, after all.

"Who was it?"

The girl's face softened ever so slightly at Clara's inquisitive nature. The Doctor always chose the ones willing to disobey him in the interest of knowledge. Something of himself that he saw in them, she supposed.

"She was just a girl," she told Clara, "Nothing special. A little lost, but that's all. Can you imagine? The Doctor, one of the most powerful creatures in the universe, and he falls for the most ordinary human on the planet."

The thought of Rose stung. The Doctor still remembered her so clearly, even though it had been years and years and years since he had last seen her. He had tried so hard to forget her, but here was this girl reminding him that he never would.

And he knew that he couldn't deny it.

"Anyway," the girl suddenly looked as if she had remembered something important. She looked at the Doctor with an intense determination. "You need to meet me. The real me. Set your TARDIS coordinates for Paris 1890."

She walked over and took the Doctor's hand gently. He was somewhat startled by the look the girl gave him. Even though it was so mingled with anger, he could still make out the affection for him that lay there.

"I'll be seeing you, Doctor," she told him seriously.

Abruptly, Clara and the Doctor were lying on the console room floor once again. The lights in the room were bright and cheerful and there was no trace of the strange girl who had visited them. The Doctor got up slowly, wordlessly and set the TARDIS coordinates for 1890.

"Doctor?" Clara asked cautiously when the TARDIS was in flight.

"Yes?" he asked, his back turned to her as he looked at different screens and flicked different switches. He momentarily wished that he could be alone. The sight of that girl—the things she said—however brief the encounter was, something about it had shaken him to his core.

"That girl she was talking about," Clara started uneasily, bringing the Doctor back to the present, "Is she—I mean, did she—" she paused, "Where is she now?"

She resolved that this was the safest question to ask. She knew that it was a potentially loaded question, but she needed to know.

The Doctor glanced at her over his shoulder. His face was hard, yet there was also a sadness there that made Clara want to move forward and give him a hug. She stood her ground, though. Staring back at him and waiting for an answer.

"Fine," the Doctor sighed finally, "I'll tell you."


	3. Chapter 3

Sally was working overtime and there wasn't any good reason for it. She was annoyed and bored as she sat at the 20th century bus stop.

At least the rain had stopped, she thought to herself, trying to look at the bright side of things.

Being the newest rookie at headquarters, the boys at the agency had been having their fair share of fun with her. Do the paperwork, Sally. No lunch for you, Sally, you're on cleanup duty for that mess we made on Quadronan 5. Quite frankly, it was driving her insane.

Today was no different. She had apparently lost a coin toss with Hardy for the job of investigating the spikes in temporal activity in this quaint, late-20th century Earth suburb. In retrospect, however, she could have sworn that Pugnax coins had heads on both sides. A tribute to two-headed president Be Calbaros, she had read somewhere.

Soon she would be a real Time Agent, she reassured herself, and then the joke would be on those guys for helping her clock in more overtime than anyone else in the department.

She fiddled with her vortex manipulator absent-mindedly as she waited for anything funny to appear. When she had heard that she was being posted to this specific planet, she had been quite excited. She had read the files and knew for a fact that these were the stomping grounds of known freelancer "The Doctor".

She had always wanted to meet a Time Lord. Mainly for the novelty of meeting someone part of the race responsible for the invention of time travel, but also for the fact that the Doctor had, once upon a time, saved her planet from being destroyed by the Daleks. The man with the changing face was a legend in her culture.

She checked her reflection in a window for lack of anything better to do. Her short, black hair was plastered against her forehead from the rain. Her dark skin looked gaunt from not getting enough sleep. Only her bright blue eyes— key trait of the Fugax race—still looked alive and willing. She prayed that something exciting would happen, already.

Then she heard the little cry followed by the pitter-patter of a pair of very small feet. She barely had time to glance in the direction the noise had come from when she saw the small girl bolt past her. She jumped to her feet and set after the child.

"Finally," she muttered as she ran, "Something exciting."

The child didn't go very far. Obviously exhausted, the girl slumped against the wall of an alleyway after a few hundred metres. When she reached where the girl had stopped, Sally noticed that she was crying.

"There, now," she tried consoling the small child, "What's your name?"

The girl started sobbing outright and Sally had no clue what to do about it. Being an only child herself, she had never been very good with children. She crouched down beside the little girl and reached a tentative hand out to touch her shoulder.

"Hey, it's going to be f—,"

As soon as Sally touched her shoulder, the girl recoiled as if she had been shocked by an electric wire. Sally looked on in stunned awe as an eerie, golden glow filled the girl's eyes. She pulled her communicator from her pocket and slowly dialled her partner's number.

When he answered, she talked slowly, using as little volume as possible.

"Hardy, you might want to get over here," she said, slightly entranced by the way the glow in the girl's eyes was intensifying. "Now."

The girl wasn't looking at anything in particular, but Sally had an idea that she was seeing a whole lot more than her surroundings. The girl's head snapped up and suddenly she was looking Sally right in the eye.

She gave a start as the girl's face became cold and blank. "Nothing," she said. The way she said it sent a chill up Sally's spine. "You're not you anymore. They took you away."

Instantly, the glow in her eyes was cut off, causing the girl to go limp. Sally had just enough time to catch the little girl before her unconscious body hit the ground. Behind her, she heard the sound of someone arriving by vortex manipulator. It was Hardy.

"Miss me, already?" Hardy harped behind her, "Careful, people might start to think we're co-dependent."

"Hardy," Sally hushed him, never taking her eyes off the child.

"Seriously?" he said incredulously, spotting the little girl in her arms, "this is what you call me all the way down to the Stone Age for?"

"Scan her," Sally said quietly, still looking down at the girl. She had a creeping suspicion about the child, though she didn't understand how it could be possible.

Hardy shrugged and pulled a scanner out of his pocket. He waved it over the small body without much conviction. "I'm telling you, it's just a normal—" His voice trailed off as he caught sight of the tiny monitor. His mouth popped open and for a moment he just stood like that and stared at the small screen.

"That's impossible," he finally whispered.

"Yes," Sally said, "But here she is, nonetheless."

She knew what Hardy was looking at. She had seen it with her own eyes, after all.

In their attempt to replicate what was left of the Time Lord TARDIS designs, the Time Agents had wrestled for many years with what was by far their greatest challenge: Gaining access to the time vortex and then gathering enough temporal energy to travel via the vortex. Finally, they had managed to beat these challenges, but even now the newest vortex manipulators still had lengthy reloading periods in between trips to gather this energy.

And here was this child who was positively bursting with temporal energy all on her own. It was impossible, but by the estimation of the scanner the child had almost as much energy contained inside of her as a fully grown Time Lord. It seemed to be building up inside her, as well.

Who knew how much energy she would generate in a couple of years?

"We've hit the mother lode," Hardy said, looking at the pretty, sleeping child, "We could harness energy off this kid for decades. Maybe even centuries."

Sally shifted the child's weight uncomfortably in her arms. She wasn't happy with the idea of using a child as an energy resource. Even if said child was a once in a lifetime find.

"We can't," she told her partner firmly, "she's not something you can just plug a bunch of cables into and leave to power an empire. She's a living thing."

Hardy looked at her and nodded his head seriously for two seconds. Then, he dropped the façade with a snort. He walked off and Sally heard him mutter something about rookies. She watched as he dialled a number into his communicator. Mostly likely calling the head commander, if she knew Hardy.

He had a lengthy conversation with whoever was on the other side of the line of which Sally caught very little. When he finished he had an amused, slightly evil grin on his face. She knew instantly that plans had been made at her expense.

"Right," Hardy told her, "the commander thinks we should make sure the kid doesn't explode or anything before we go using her as a power source. He said one of us should, and I quote, 'embark on a long term research mission' by studying her cerebral activities until her brain has fully developed."

"We can't just take a child away from its parents to study it, Hardy," Sally told him.

"But that's the beauty of it," said Hardy, evil smile widening, "she doesn't have any parents. I checked her ID and it said that she didn't have one. Whatever she is, she's not human or anything else we know of. Technically, she doesn't exist."

Sally didn't like the sound of it. Not one bit. Somewhere far out there, someone was missing a child. Granted, those people had been irresponsible in leaving their not-so-ordinary bundle of joy to be found by predators like Hardy, but that didn't change the fact that the child should be returned.

The only problem, though it was a selfish one, was this: Was this child more important than Sally's potential spot as a respected Time Agent?

Bad as it made her feel, Sally knew that she would do anything to be taken seriously.

"So you're saying that we're basically going to raise a child, then?" Sally asked, still sceptical.

"No, Sally," Hardy said, "_You're_ going to raise a child."

"But that's not fair!" she moaned, "Why are you always sticking me with the dirty work? Can't you do some of the hard parts for once?"

"Fine," he said with a not-so-sorrowful sigh, "Let's flip for it."


	4. Chapter 4

Clara's breath caught at the beauty of the scene in front of her as they got out of the TARDIS.

"Well, mystery girl sure knows how to pick a venue, that's for sure," she said in awe.

They had landed in a small alleyway. The dark streets were illuminated with occasional street lamps and the mighty Eiffel tower was visible, illuminated in the distance. The streets were full of people and horse-drawn carriages hustling and bustling to and fro.

"Feeling a bit underdressed now," Clara said, looking down at her cute, above the knee plaid dress and comparing it to the heavy, complicated dresses passing woman were wearing.

"You look fine," the Doctor said distractedly, looking around for any trace of the girl who had told him to meet her there. Something about her was just so familiar. So much like—but that was impossible. The point was that he just needed to know more about her.

Just when the Doctor was about to head back into the TARDIS and check that he had the right date, someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around to find a dark haired woman in a maid's uniform.

"Are you the Doctor?" she asked uncertainly. The TARDIS was translating the maid's French fine, but owing to her low fuel levels, the maid's accent was quite thick. She kept glancing at Clara's exposed knees disapprovingly.

"I am," the Doctor told her, straightening his bow tie proudly, "And this is my companion, Clara."

"Charmed," the maid said, looking to be more ashamed to be seen with them than actually charmed, "Well, if you're the Doctor, you'd better come with me. My mistress has been expecting you."

The maid haughtily gestured toward the carriage closest to them, allowing Clara and the Doctor to enter first before entering and seating herself neatly inside. The carriage interior was plush; they were obviously dealing with someone of some stature.

As they set off, the maid looked from one strangely dressed person to the other, wondering what her mistress could possibly want with such peculiar people. The ride was awkward and silent, with the maid sticking her nose in the air and looking the other way pretentiously every time the Doctor tried to strike up a conversation.

The carriage came to a halt and the maid held her hand in front of the exit for a moment, blocking the Doctor and Clara's way. "You will wait in the foyer while I notify my mistress of your arrival," she told the pair, concerned that their etiquette may have been forgotten along with their dress sense.

The Doctor nodded, pulling a face at Clara as the maid's back was turned. Clara giggled.

Exiting the carriage, Clara gave another little gasp as she took in the beauty of the big, white house before her. It was intricately decorated with classic French windows and ornamental awnings. Small, perfectly round topiary bushes dotted the path leading to the house. A warm, welcoming light flooded out from its open doors.

The foyer turned out to be huge, with two large, winged staircases most likely leading to an east and a west wing. Where the walls weren't lined with large bookcases, hung beautifully painted landscapes, some of which belonged to famous artists, Clara noted. From the ceiling, hung a large, glittering chandelier.

The maid disappeared up one of the staircases, leaving Clara and the Doctor alone in the foyer.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Clara said with a smile, her eyes discovering new sights to gawk at every time she surveyed the room. The Doctor didn't seem to share her enthusiasm, though.

"I suppose," he said, casting an indifferent eye over the room.

"What's wrong?" Clara asked him concernedly. She had been sympathetic when he had told her about Rose, even offering to console him, but he had wanted to be left alone then. He had been sulking ever since. Sulking and avoiding, Clara thought miserably. She couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't just Rose causing his unhappiness.

A soft footfall at the top of the stair made both of them look up.

It was the same girl they had seen in the TARDIS, though she looked to be a little bit older. She was even more beautiful than the Doctor remembered she had been. Her hair was tied back with a light blue ribbon which matched the colour of her delicate, long lace dress. Instead of the quarter bell sleeve characteristic of the time period, her dress only had a pair of slight, capped sleeves. Her long, white gloves topped the outfit off perfectly.

She was standing at the top of the staircase, staring at the Doctor in shocked disbelief.

The Doctor was staring back.

"You," was all he said.

Her face broke into a heartbreakingly beautiful smile. Heartbreaking because he could've sworn he'd seen the smile before.

"You," she replied before running down the stairs. He barely had time to react as she bounded into his arms and held him tightly. The hug felt too familiar, as well.

"It's been too long," she muttered into his tweed jacket.

When she pulled back, her eyes were large and sad, "I'm sorry," she told him, "I know it doesn't mean much to you now, but I hope you'll accept the apology nonetheless." She smiled at him sadly, "I suppose I've broken your one rule."

"And what's that?" he asked, still not knowing quite what to make of the reunion.

"Don't wander off," she said, turning serious, "I broke the rule, but with good reason."

"Why?" he asked.

She smiled, again. "Sorry," she said, "Spoilers, I'm afraid."

Hearing the word, the Doctor clenched his teeth. He didn't like feeling as confused, as out of the loop, as he did at the moment. He liked being the cleverest one in the room.

Looking at his company, though, he was getting the looming feeling that he most certainly wasn't. Who was this girl and why did he feel such an utter connection with her?

It scared him.

The soft clinging of a bell brought him out of his reverie.

"Ah, that'll be the dinner bell," the girl said, looking in the direction of the noise and clapping her hands softly, "Shall we?"

"Hold on, dinner? We don't even know your name!" Clara implored. In her travels with the Doctor, she had built up a strong sense of paranoia whenever people who she didn't know were being too amiable. She had learned the hard way—namely being kidnapped more than once on the odd alien market plain— that friendly people usually had ulterior motives.

The girl's already large eyes widened and she slapped herself against the forehead. "Sorry!" she said sheepishly, "I've forgotten that you have absolutely no idea who I am!" she grinned at the two of them, "Pleased to meet you Doctor, Clara. I'm Sam."


	5. Chapter 5

"Sam, Sam!" Sally was shaking her hard as Sam screamed and tossed in her bed. The nightmares had been steadily worsening over the years, but in the past year she could've sworn that they had worsened more than the previous twelve years combined.

It was late, Sally noted; still dark out. It was probably only past 02:00.

Finally, Sam went still. The next moment she was opening her eyes. She took in Sally's dishevelled appearance and made an apologetic face.

"I've done it again, haven't I?" She asked, flinching ever so slightly.

"It's not your fault," Sally sighed, letting go of Sam's shoulders, "Do you remember what this one was about, at least?"

As per usual, Sam shook her head. "I don't know what it is," she said, staring into a space, "When I wake up, it's as if my mind doesn't even realise that I was asleep in the first place. I remember getting into bed the previous evening and the next thing I know, it's the next day." She frowned to herself before looking into Sally's eyes. "That's not normal, is it?"

Sally smiled and kissed Sam's forehead. In so many ways, the girl had become like a daughter to her. She certainly loved her as though she was. "I'm not a very good judge on what's normal and what's not, dear" she said jokingly, "I'm not even human."

Sam grimaced. "Neither am I," she said bitterly.

Sally felt for her. Nineteen years old (give or take) and Sam still knew absolutely nothing about where she came from, who she was, or even what exactly she was. Sally was glad that she could at least have given her a good life between when she had found her that night and now. They had a nice little house in the suburbs; Sam had gotten a good education, made good friends.

Of course, life hadn't been without their little obstacles. It took a good deal of training for Sam to have been able to touch people without the temporal energy flaring up, for example. Also, the fact that she had been able to comprehend and discern quantum physics and string theory at age eight had taken a lot of explaining.

Then there was the looming knowledge that the Time Agents would come for her one day. Twenty-five. That was the age they wanted her at; when her brain had finally fully developed.

Looking back now, Sally couldn't believe that she had ever placed her own fate ahead of Sam's. She also, however, knew that, had she refused to partake in the experiment with the impossible child, Sam would have most probably been transported to the agency to live there. Instead, the child had gotten to have a life and a family. Sally had decided a long time ago that when the time came for the Time Agents to take Sam away to headquarters where they would probably do tests and experiments on her, she would try to protect her against them at all costs.

That was the responsibility of a mother, after all.

"Communicator," Sam said absently.

A moment later, a familiar beeping sounded from Sally's room.

Sally gave Sam a frown; she didn't like it when Sam used her abilities to see timelines as a parlour trick. She gave a grin at Sally's disapproval, her tongue cheekily sticking out of a gap between her teeth.

Sally got up to fetch the communicator. She sighed when she recognised Hardy's number. "What is it now?" she asked exasperatedly after picking up, "You do realise that it is in the middle of the night here, don't you?"

"Is it?" Hardy said, feigning innocence unconvincingly. Sally clenched her teeth and tried to dispel the murderous thoughts running through her mind.

"Anyway," she heard him say conversationally, "How's it going down there, Mama Bear?"

"It's been months, Hardy."

"Yeah, sorry 'bout that," he said, "We've been pretty—busy."

The way he said it made the hairs at the back of her neck prickle. "Busy with what?"

Suddenly, a blood curdling scream rang out from across the line. It sounded like a woman. "What was that?" Sally asked more urgently. She didn't like the idea of the agency being up to sinister activities. Not with them monitoring her and Sam so closely, anyway.

"Oh, that?" Hardy answered nonchalantly, "That's just subject 5. I've taken the liberty of making her my little project. She's quite the feisty one when it comes to experiments, though."

"It sounds like you're torturing her," Sally said in disgust.

"It's not torture if it serves a greater purpose," Hardy replied lightly.

Sally couldn't understand how he could stand in such close proximity with someone hurting so badly and be entirely calm about it. She knew the Pugnax were cruel, but Hardy seemed exceptionally so.

"Oh, yeah," he said, remembering why he was calling in the first place, "There's been a change of plan and the agency asked me to tell you."

Something in Sally's stomach fluttered. "What?" was all she could manage, a large bubble of anxiety in her chest threatening to suffocate her.

"The girl—what did you call her?—_Samantha_," he snorted, "There've been a few scientific advances made around here thanks to yours truly. The fact of the matter being that we think we can harness your kid's energy before she turns twenty-five. We have a nice, cosy little cell lined up for her here at headquarters. We'll come over and pick her up in the morning." With that, four small sentences, Sally's life had suddenly been thrown from its small axis. The line had gone dead, leaving Sally feeling as if the breath had been knocked out of her.

They were coming for her. The thought kept repeating over and over again in her head. They were going to take her away from her home and everything she knew and she was going to be alone. They were coming for her. They were going to keep her in a cell like a prisoner and Hardy was going to torture her just like he was torturing subject 5.

Unless she did something about it _right now._

The resolve came to Sally in less than a second. The plan took another split second to formulate in her mind. She went over to her closet and started emptying it, searching for the travel suitcase Sam had given her for her birthday the previous year.

Sam had bought it with a luxury cruise in mind; she knew that Sally had always wanted to see the world and had promised her that they would go see it together.

Hearing the commotion, Sam got out of bed and walked over to Sally's room. She saw the heaps of clothes and various other means sprinkled all over the bedroom floor and looked at Sally as though she had gone insane.

"Sally, what are you doing?" she asked, moving over to see what she was searching for.

"Looking for this," Sally said triumphantly, holding the suitcase up. Without any further explanation, she made her way to Sam's room and started emptying her closet, as well. This time, however, she was throwing all of the clothes contained in the closet into the suitcase.

"Sally, what's going on?" Sam was growing scared now. Her hands started to tremble at the sight of the panic in Sally's eyes, but she quickly suppressed the fear. She had to stay brave and keep a clear head.

She followed Sally uncomprehendingly as she raided the bathroom, Sam's socks and underwear drawer and finally bounded into the kitchen. There, Sally rummaged through her purse on the kitchen counter and procured her wallet. She took out five-hundred pounds and threw the notes on top of the pile of clothing in the suitcase.

Finally, she turned to face Sam, handing her the suitcase.

"There," she told her, "that should get you far away enough from here that their trackers won't find you immediately."

Sam held the suitcase in her arms, staring at Sally mutely. She opened and closed her mouth a few times before a sentence had formed.

"I don't understand," she told her quietly.

Sally wasn't having any of it. Her eyes had gone hard and emotionless as she explained. "The Time Agents have decided that they're coming for you early. Now, I am not going to let that happen to you, because it's my responsibility as your guardian to keep you safe and happy your whole life. That's why you're going to leave right now. That's why the moment that you leave this house, you have to promise me that you'll keep running so they don't ever find you. Do you understand now?"

Sam was hearing the words coming out of Sally's mouth, but they weren't making any sense in her mind. Having seemingly lost the ability to reply, she simply stared at her with a dumb-founded expression on her face.

Sally grabbed her shoulders tightly. "Samantha," she said, using her full name, "You need to leave. You need to get as far away as possible from here before dawn. Please."

"But what about you?" she asked, quieter still.

Sally sighed. "I'll be fine," she assured her, "It's not me that they're after."

Sam felt the burning of tears in her eyes. "I don't want to go."

"You always were a stubborn one," she said, a hint of a sad smile tugging at the corner of Sally's mouth.

She put her hand on the young girl's cheek, fighting back the tears in her own eyes. "I don't want you to go, either," she told her, "but that doesn't change the fact that you should. You're a tough girl, Sam; you're going to be fine."

Sally grabbed Sam and held her for a moment in a tight hug.

It felt as though she was dreaming. Sally was the only family she knew, and now she was being forced to leave her behind. She didn't know the first thing about being on her own or how to start a new life. The only thing she knew for sure was that the thought terrified her.

Sally let go of Sam and took two steps back. The expression on her face had turned serious.

"Take this," she loosened the vortex manipulator around her arm and handed it to Sam, "I've already typed in the coordinates. After you've transported, you need to try to get even further on foot."

Sam nodded.

With one last look at Sally—her old, happy life—she turned on her heel and went to the front door. She exited the house, the door closing behind her with finality. The sound was like the final ball dropping, signalling the end of a very long, very happy chapter in her life.

Inside, Sally went to sit down at the kitchen table. There, she put her head in her hands and started to sob.


	6. Chapter 6

"Thank you, Marie," Sam smiled as the maid put a steaming bowl of soup in front of her on the table.

When the maid retired tight-lipped to the kitchen, an awkward silence reigned around the dining table where the three people sat. Neither Clara nor the Doctor touched their own food.

"It's onion soup," Sam said after a few moments. She lifted a gloved hand, prompting the Doctor and Clara to taste.

"It looks lovely," Clara told her stiffly. With that, the silence continued to stretch on. Clara held her spoon awkwardly, glancing at the Doctor as if to see if it was safe for her to dig in.

The Doctor didn't have time for pleasantries. He leaned back in his seat, surveying Sam carefully.

"Who are you, Sam?" He asked her again.

Sam had been taking a sip of her soup. Upon hearing his question, she rolled her eyes and put the spoon back into the bowl. She leaned back in her own seat and met the Doctor's gaze.

"You know full well I'm not going to tell you," she told him once again. In the past hour that they had been at her house, the Doctor had asked her this question at least three times. She gave a cunning smirk. "Who do you think I am, Doctor?"

The Doctor shook his head, irritated that she wasn't giving him a straight answer. "It doesn't work like that," he said exasperatedly, "You told me to meet you here. You're the reason that we're sitting at this table right now. Why?"

Sam glanced over at the grandfather clock against the wall. She had to keep stalling. It wasn't the right time yet. She hated being so deceptive, especially to him, but she had to keep him interested for another while.

If there was one thing that the Doctor couldn't resist, it was a puzzle.

"Come now, Doctor," she said, trying to keep the conversation light, "You must have formulated a few theories as to who I am by now. Let's hear them."

The Doctor seemed to be trying to decipher something in her eyes. This put Sam on edge; he couldn't figure it out just yet. She was banking, at the moment, on being cleverer than he was.

The Doctor shook his head, frustrated. Then, he seemed to come up with an idea. Sam had to pull her best poker face when she saw the cunning smile tugging at the edges of his mouth.

"You seem to like games, Sam, so why don't we play one?"

Despite herself, Sam found that she was unable to refuse this. She did like putting her intellect to the test every now and again. An adversary like the Doctor was just too good to pass up.

The Doctor recognised the look on Sam's face as one that he had had many times when presented with similar challenges. He knew he had made a breakthrough.

"I'm listening," Sam told him.

"I ask you a question. You only have to answer yes or no. You pass on a question—just one—Clara and I leave and you never see us again."

Sam frowned. "Fine," she said, "But I'm not answering anything too specific."

"Agreed," the Doctor smiled.

He took a deep breath. He knew exactly what he wanted to ask her first.

"Saving a mental imprint of oneself onto the TARDIS databanks requires very specific knowledge. Knowledge of Gallifreyan technology, for one. Time Lord knowledge," he placed specific emphasis on the words "Time Lord". He had been waiting to ask her this question ever since he saw her in the TARDIS the first time.

He wasn't quite sure if he would be able to handle her answer, though.

He took another pause before asking it. "Are you—"

"No," she answered before he could complete the question. She knew for a fact that she wasn't remotely Time Lord. It had been the first thing that Sally had checked after finding her all those years ago, but the scanner had said that she wasn't of any species that the Time Agents had in their databanks.

Sam felt bad watching the Time Lord's face fall slightly. Being one of a kind got lonely sometimes.

"Alright, then," the Doctor said, trying not to let his disappointment in this fact show too much. He knew that he changed the subject a little too quickly for her not to notice.

"Next Question: Do you have any relation to River Song?"

Sam laughed at this. The Doctor was grateful that she didn't press the matter of his previous question any further.

"No," she told him with a smile, "Though we did go out for tea once or twice. Got quite a bit of Intel from her about you, as a matter of fact. Why do you ask?"

The Doctor shrugged. "A girl appears and tells me that she's from my future. That's quite a River thing to do."

Sam nodded understandingly. "I can see how you might see it that way then, but no. I am not, nor do I have any relation to, River Song."

"Fine, then," the Doctor nodded, gearing up for the next question, "The rose."

Though she hid it well, he caught the flash of emotion in her eye at the mention of the words.

"That's not a question," she told him quietly. He couldn't have figured it out already, she thought fearfully, not even the Doctor was that good.

"No," he agreed, his voice suddenly acquiring a dangerous edge to it, "My question is this: Are you somehow trying to get to me through Rose Tyler? Because I'll have you know, that is not something that should be tried with me."

Sam's eyes widened in shock. She had not expected him to come to such a conclusion. "No," she said immediately, "I would never do that."

The Doctor nodded at her sincerity, slightly more at ease and, at the same time, even more frustrated. So far, he had learned absolutely nothing from this interrogation.

He was about to ask another question when the maid entered the dining room once again. She was carrying a tray with three glasses and a bottle of champagne. Sam hastily stood up to take the tray from the servant.

"Thank you, Marie," she told her gratefully.

"What's with the champagne?" Clara asked.

"Well," Sam said with a timid smile, pouring a small amount of champagne into each glass and walking around to hand one to both the Doctor and Clara, "I'm going to make a toast."

She moved back to her position at the head of the table, remaining standing.

"A toast? To what?" The Doctor asked, eyeing the golden liquid with disdain.

"My birthday," Sam said with a grin, "I'm twenty-five today and I hope to have a very ha—oh!"

Before she could finish her toast, a shot was fired through the dining room window, shattering Sam's champagne glass in her hand. She looked over to the clock and realised that she hadn't been keeping track of the time properly. Out of habit, she muttered a Gallifreyan curse under her breath.

"What did you just say?!" The Doctor's head popped out from where he had ducked under the table.

Realising her mistake, Sam had no clever retort for the Doctor. Luckily, another shot was fired, causing everyone in the room to once again duck their heads under the table.

"Go through the kitchen and out the back door!" Sam shouted as the gunshots started raining down, "Let her go first!" She said, looking toward Clara.

The Doctor nodded and crawled for the door the maid had used earlier. All the while, he kept Clara firmly under his gaze in front of him. He would not allow anything to happen to her, he thought to himself fiercely.

Once in the kitchen, Sam spurred the Doctor and Clara on at a run out the back door of the house. They exited into the large grounds behind the house, which were laden with flower beds and pretty statues. To the side, stood a small barn.

"There!" Sam shouted, gesturing for them to run towards the structure. The sounds of gunshots followed them all the way as they crunched across the gravel surface of the grounds.

As they reached the barn doors, the Doctor caught a glimpse of the familiar blue of his TARDIS inside the barn. "How'd she get here?" he shouted mid-run.

"I called her," Sam said with a shrug. She handed the Doctor back his TARDIS key with a grin. He realised that she must have pick-pocketed him during their hug.

"Thank you," he said with a disapproving scowl.

Nearing the TARDIS, the Doctor was about to click his fingers to open the doors of the machine, but Sam beat him to it. She ran past him into the console room and up to the console board at the centre of the room.

"Oi! What are you—" The Doctor shut up as he saw what she was doing.

"Hello," she said sweetly as the TARDIS groaned fondly at her touch. As if she knew exactly who Sam was…

"Doctor," Clara said quietly, growing steadily more alarmed as the sounds of gunfire neared.

The Doctor ripped his gaze away from Sam's interaction with the TARDIS to glance over his shoulder. The hulking shadows of at least three fully grown men were approaching them rapidly. They were carrying standard R25 space rifles. Standard for—

"Time Agents," the Doctor said to himself in surprise. He turned back to Sam. She seemed to be deep in thought, absently stroking the console.

"Why are the Time Agents here, Sam?" he asked.

She met his gaze evenly.

"You," the Doctor realised, "They're after you. Why?"

Without answering, Sam punched a lever on the console.

"I'll be seeing you, old girl," the Doctor heard her mutter.

The TARDIS shuddered to life. She dropped her gaze from the console and bolted for the door, but not before the Doctor caught a hold of her hand.

The moment that he touched her, it felt as though an electric current had passed through him. He yelped, but found himself unable to let go of her hand. Then he gasped as he caught sight of her eyes. They were glowing bright gold.

He had only once before seen someone's eyes glow as bright gold as that.

"Trenzalore," Sam said, her voice seeming strangely amplified. She wasn't looking at him anymore, she was looking straight into the time vortex itself.

"What?" he asked, fearful of the omnipotent creature this girl had become.

"You will fall," she told him, "And then to Trenzalore is where you'll go."

The Doctor felt the colour drain from his face.

The glow flashed out of her eyes and Sam removed her hand from the Doctor's grasp. Before he could stop her, she was out the door and the TARDIS was in flight.

"Come back!" The Doctor shouted, but it was too late.

"What's happened to her?" Clara asked, distressed, "Are they going to hurt her?"

"What does it mean?" the Doctor muttered to himself.

He knew what Sam had done, though he didn't know how it could be possible. She wasn't Time Lord, yet she had just looked forward into his personal timeline. It wasn't just having access to the time lines and vortex energy, however, it was so much more than that.

It was as though she _was_ vortex energy. In that single touch, he had felt a power equivalent to the inside of the heart of the TARDIS.

The only way he had ever seen a human harbouring such massive amounts of power was by looking into and absorbing energy from the vortex itself.

Even then, though, having contained such an amount of power for as long as Sam seemingly has, she should have burnt up ages ago.

"Doctor?' Clara's voice brought him back to the present.

"Yes?" he said.

"We've stopped," she told him.

In his contemplating, the Doctor abruptly came to the realisation that he had neglected to account for how scared Clara must be feeling.

"Are you alright?" he asked her.

"Yeah," she said unconvincingly. She cleared her throat. "Who were those people, Doctor? What did they want with Sam?"

"Time Agents," he told her, "As for what they want with Sam, I have a feeling it isn't friendly conversation. With the amount of power she has, she'd be quite the hot commodity to anyone who knew about her."

Clara shuddered and decided to change the subject. "Where have we landed?"

The Doctor suddenly remembered that Sam had fiddled with the TARDIS switches just before she had made her prediction. He walked over to the console to check the date. When he turned back around, Clara noticed that his face had turned into a question mark.

"It's the 5th of March 2008," he told her.


	7. Chapter 7

She couldn't walk anymore.

It had been hours and hours since she had left Sally behind, but the hole in her heart still stung so bad that the pain was almost physical. Admittedly, the first hour and a half of Sam's journey had been spent sobbing over losing the only life she knew, but she had composed herself fairly well after that. She had transported via the vortex manipulator to the coordinates Sally had set for her.

It turned out that the coordinates were set for central London. Once there, she took the first bus she could find, winding her up where she was now; namely the Peckham district in South-East London.

She was tired. So tired. The sun was just peeking over the horizon and Sam decided that she was far along enough to take a little breather. She found a little bench overlooking a fairly large council housing complex. A board next to the complex revealed the words "Powell Estate" in big, blue letters.

As the sun crept out slowly but surely, Sam was sitting in a delightfully warm patch of sunlight. The light was a welcome warmth on her skin and quite soon she found herself dozing.

The next moment, she awoke to find the afternoon sun blistering her face in full blast.

She shielded her eyes uncomfortably from the afternoon rays and decided that it was time for some food. She had abruptly realised that she was starving.

Standing up, she noted the little golden plaque dedicating the bench to someone who had probably lived around here and had since passed away.

"Thanks for the bench, Rose Tyler," she muttered with a joking smile before walking off.

...

The sandwich had been very small and slightly unsatisfying. With all of four hundred and eighty pounds left, she would probably have been able to afford more of a meal than she had bought for herself.

But then again, Sam had no idea how long her money would have to last.

With nowhere else to go, Sam resolved to return to the bench that she had promptly named "Rose's bench". On her way over, however, the strangest sound made her stop in her tracks and listen.

There was a sort of wheezing, grinding sound in the distance, but that wasn't what had caught her attention. She could have sworn that someone had been calling to her.

No—she mentally corrected herself— it ran much deeper than that.

It hadn't been a call at all, really. It had been more like a sensation. It was like the sensation you felt when someone was watching you, only this seemed more—purposeful. It was as though the sensation _wanted _to be felt. As though someone (or something) else had stepped inside her head for a brief moment and had jangled some things about to catch her attention.

Sam shook her head dismissively and started for Rose's bench once again.

Then, just as she had taken a few steps, she felt it again. Stronger this time. The sensation had a sense of urgency to it. A strangely familiar yet also very alien thrill ran through Sam, causing her to be pulled towards the calling. Somehow, she felt a very strong connection to whoever was calling. It was more than just the connection of mutual curiosity with one another, it was like _fate._

She rounded a corner and witnessed a large, blue box materialise right in front of her eyes.

"Hello," she breathed quietly, "And where exactly did you come from?"


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's note: So, the reason that I'm posting this chapter so quickly after the previous one is this: This is the last chapter of part one of my story! Don't worry, there will be no hiatus in-between this part of the fic and the next (which, in my opinion, is much more exciting), so you can expect part two to drop on Wednesday as per usual!**

**Hope you've enjoyed the story so far! :)**

**...**

"2008?" Clara said uncertainly, "What's so special about then?"

The Doctor went through all the events he had previously experienced in the year.

He had taken the Ponds to see the Beijing Olympics just recently; it was—he banished the memory quickly. He didn't want to think about them for even a second.

It was a raw wound.

He remembered the Dalek invasion that he and all his companions had managed to stop. Or had that been in 2009? Rose had even returned to help them with that.

Rose…

He banished the thought from his mind once again, not wanting to think about any of it. Especially not about her.

The point was that nothing significant had happened at this specific point in time that the Doctor could recall.

"Doctor?"

He looked up to see that Clara was staring at him with a concerned expression on her face. He had gotten lost in his thoughts again, he realised. That was happening a lot, lately.

"What?" he asked her, only wincing at his rudeness after the words had left his mouth.

Clara didn't seem to mind, though. "Why did we land in 2008?" she repeated patiently, "What's so special about then?"

"I don't know," the Doctor told her, fiddling uncomfortably with his suspenders, "Why don't we go find out?"

Clara smiled excitedly and the Doctor took a moment to appreciate her presence. That willingness that she had to face whatever the TARDIS doors opened to every time they travelled to some obscure time or place was the reason why she was his companion. They were all just so brave.

And that was usually what lead to their downfalls, a little voice in his head whispered.

The Doctor shook his head and ignored his conscience, instead leading the way out of the console room and into what lay beyond.

Upon exiting the TARDIS, the familiar sight that greeted him stopped him in his tracks. These events were no longer just coincidental.

He was standing in front of the Powell Estate. The TARDIS was parked in her usual parking spot in the small alleyway overlooking one of the complex's entrances.

So many times, he and Rose had passed the very spot that he stood now, hand-in-hand, to visit her mother, or her friends, or to investigate cases in the area. It was the very spot where Rose had told him that she would come with him the first time. The spot where Rose had agreed to go with him a second time after he had regenerated. The place where he had seen her face for the last time before regenerating into his present self.

"The Powell Estate," Clara read the sign a few metres away, "Peckham district, by the look of the place. Not exactly farfetched, is it?"

The Doctor meant to smile at her, but it came out as more of a grimace. "It's fine," he covered before she could ask, "Let's just find what we're supposed to find around here, shall we?"

Clara nodded and they set of toward the park next to the Powell Estate. The Doctor tried not to think of how he and Rose used to sit on the swings there with ice-cream cones when they visited Jackie.

A flash of gold caught his eye and the Doctor, as he always did when he went there, stopped for a moment to look at the little plaque mounted on the park bench. Clara was about to ask him about what he was doing, when she spotted the plaque herself. She closed her mouth, deciding that it was better not to say anything.

"This bench is dedicated to the memory of Rose Tyler," the plaque read, "1986-2006."

"I'm sorry, Doctor," Clara said finally.

"S'fine," the Doctor said, ripping his eyes from the sight, "It's not as if she's really dead."

His voice broke on the word "dead", making his attempted nonchalance come off as slightly pathetic. Clara gave a sympathetic smile and grabbed his hand, squeezing it gently.

Letting go, her face became serious once again. She looked around the area, coming up blank. "Why did Sam send us here?" she wondered aloud.

"I've no idea," he said, also not spotting anything out of place, "Maybe she just sent us away so we wouldn't get into the same trouble as her. Time Agents are always on the hunt for new and improved time travelling technology."

If that were the case, she wouldn't have told us to meet her there in the first place, his voice of reason nagged. They were sent back to 2008 for a reason.

"We should scan the area," he said, perking up slightly at the thought, "That way we could determine if anything abnormal happened round here. You see, I have this nifty little machine that goes ding and—"

"Doctor," Clara interrupted him.

If one squinted, one would be able to make out the TARDIS that was still parked in the distance. Now, another figure could just barely be seen standing in front of the Doctor's machine. The person seemed to be staring at the police box.

The Doctor felt himself go slightly weak in the knees upon spotting what Clara had been referring to.

Her hair was short and blonde. She was wearing a pink jersey with black jeans and trainers. All pink and yellow…

The Doctor hadn't even realised that he was rapidly moving towards the sight until he was standing a few metres away. By this time, he was so convinced of this person's identity that he didn't even try to stop the single word from escaping his mouth.

"Rose?"

She turned around and his heart dropped. It wasn't Rose. Not at all.

"You," he said blankly.

It was Sam. She was younger than she had been the previous times he had seen her. That confident air about her wasn't there. She just looked scared and small.

The disappointment that accompanied the revelation that it hadn't been Rose dissipated quickly at the sight of Sam.

This was why he was sent here— he was sure of it.

He just couldn't get past how fragile she looked.

Sam looked at the strange man in the bowtie as well as the girl who was running up from behind him. She didn't understand the awed look that the man was giving her.

Then she realised that her hand was still on the door of the police box.

"Sorry," she muttered apologetically, assuming that this was the reason for the man's stare, "Is she yours?"

The Doctor looked at her incredulously. Was she referring to Clara?

"'What?" he asked rather ineloquently.

"The TARDIS," Sam reiterated, "Is she yours?"

The Doctor blinked several times at the teenager's up-front words.

"Yes," he told her. He gathered that this version of Sam hadn't met him the previous two times yet, then. It would certainly explain the age gap between her and the other two versions.

"She's beautiful," Sam said dreamily, more to herself than to him. In her head, she heard the machine tell her to come inside.

"No," she told the TARDIS, "I think your owner needs to invite me in first."

"What was that?" the Doctor asked. He could have sworn that he had just heard the TARDIS talking to Sam, but that was impossible. Only he had the power to communicate with his police box.

"Sorry," Sam apologised again, "I'm actually quite new at this. You see, I've only read over some TARDIS specs at home, but I've never actually—"

"Hold on," the Doctor was gawking at her fully now, "You have TARDIS specs?"

"Had," she corrected him. Some sort of emotion flashed through her eyes, but it came and went too quickly for the Doctor to discern what it was, "My guardian worked for the Time Agents. They had all sorts of information about the Time Lords and their time machines. Apparently they're all gone now, though," she finished sadly.

Sam stroked the door absently once more before her eyes grew twice in size and she let out an audible gasp. "You're not with them, are you? The Time Agents? I'm supposed to be running away from them."

The Doctor couldn't help but be a little amused by the fact that she was asking him if he was the enemy. It also attributed to his resolve that he had to help her in some way. She was just too young and naive to survive on her own.

"No," he reassured her, "I'm not. I'm a Time Lord. Last of, in fact."

Sam's mouth popped open into a little "o".

"You're the Doctor," she connected the dots immediately, "You help people."

"I do," he smiled, "And you're Sam."

Sam looked at him and suddenly there was an intense hope in her eyes. The look that she gave him was verging on desperation. "So you can do it, too," she said quietly, "You _see_ people. Just like I do."

Then, even quieter, "Can you help me, Doctor?"

He looked at her sympathetically. "I can try," he told her, "Come inside and I'll see what I can do."

Sam nodded contently and stepped aside to let the Doctor past. He opened the door and smiled to himself when he heard Sam's intake of breath behind him.

"I knew it would be bigger on the inside," she said, "I didn't know it would be _huge_."

As Sam stepped inside, the Doctor felt the TARDIS voice its welcome towards her. It was like she was welcoming an old friend on board. The feeling that even the TARDIS recognised Sam's familiarity was disconcerting to him.

Clara joined the Doctor where he stood watching Sam. She was walking around the console with wonder in her eyes, her fingers tracing all the different buttons and switches on the board. The Doctor also noticed that she was mouthing the different names of the switches to herself.

"Who is she, Doctor?" Clara asked quietly beside him, "I mean, she introduced herself to us and then sent us back here to meet her again. Why would someone do that?"

"I don't know," the Doctor said, eyeing Sam closely as she poked and prodded at some exposed wires on the console board.

"This is _gorgeous_!' she cried out enthusiastically, "It's just so much sleeker than travel by vortex manipulator. The temporal refractors alone are just a scientific masterpiece!"

Clara stared. "And then there's the fact that she's so much like—"

"What I would like to know," the Doctor said, cutting off Clara's words before they could add to the list of confusing things connected to Sam, "Is how she read those specs in the first place."

Clara frowned at him. "How do you mean?" she asked.

The Doctor kept his eyes trained on Sam, who was having the time of her life experimenting with the different dials and switches on the console.

"Those TARDIS specs were written in Gallifreyan," he said, "One of the most complicated languages in the universe. At this moment, there is only supposed to be one being in the universe that can speak it fluently, and it's not Sam."

At that moment, seemingly bored with simply exploring the circuitry, Sam appeared at the Doctor's side. She was bright eyed and much more at ease than she had been previously.

"This place is amazing!" she told them, flashing one of her brilliant smiles.

The Doctor returned the smile kindly. "Thank you," he told her, "but you said that you needed my help with something?"

"Oh, yeah," Sam's smile wavered as she remembered her current situation, "I really do."

"Well, why don't you sit down and tell us about the problem?" Clara asked, gesturing towards one of the jump seats.

Sam nodded and started making her way to the seat, when she stopped mid-walk. "Oh!" she gasped, "I better get my suitcase before—" The rest of her sentence was lost in the wind as the teenager flew out of the TARDIS, leaving a confused Doctor and Clara in her wake.

When they found her, Sam was staring into the distance hopelessly.

"What's wrong?" Clara asked her.

"My suitcase," she all but wailed, "I left it right over there at Rose's bench and now—"

"What?" the Doctor butted in.

"Rose's bench," Sam repeated heavily. She looked to be on the verge of tears, "You know, that little bench right over there with the plaque that says Rose Tyler."

So she didn't know who Rose was, then, the Doctor noted. Not yet, anyway. He found himself wondering once again what his link to this girl was.

"I had almost five-hundred pounds in that suitcase," Sam said sadly, "Sally is going to kill me."

Clara watched as the girl abruptly stopped talking, her eyes glazing over and her expression going blank. For whatever reason, Sam's words seemed to cause something to break inside of her, because the next moment Clara was holding Sam as she was sobbing into her shoulder.

Clara looked at the Doctor helplessly, but he didn't seem to have any clue what to do either.

"Hey," Clara said softly, stroking her back, "Why don't we go inside the TARDIS and make you some tea?"

"I don't have anywhere to go," Sam said through the sobs, "I don't have anyone or anything. I just don't know what to do."

Then Sam pulled back and looked at the Doctor over Clara's shoulder. "They say you have the answers, Doctor," she said through narrowed, red-rimmed eyes, "I've lost my family, my friends and the only life that I ever knew, so tell me, what do I do now?"

The Doctor just looked at her, not knowing what to tell her. What could he tell her that would make her situation seem in any way less bad than it was?

"What do I do!?" she shouted at him, new tears forming in her eyes.

He recognised the look on her face. It was a look that he knew only too well. It was the look of a person who had lost everything and everyone that she ever cared about. No one could console a person with a look like that.

No, the only thing that could heal what Sam was feeling was time.

And that was what the Doctor would give her.

Suddenly, he knew exactly why he had been sent to this time and place. It should have been obvious from the start, really. The Doctor came to his resolve in a matter of seconds.

"I'll tell you what you do now, Sam," the Doctor said with a small smile, "You're going to come travelling with Clara and me in the TARDIS."

This answer threw both Sam and Clara for a loop. "What?" they said in unison.

The Doctor smiled. "If you want," he told her, "Clara and I would love to have you."

Sam looked at Clara, who had caught on to the Doctor's decision and was now smiling warmly at her. "It's quite a laugh," Clara told her encouragingly, "I mean, it does get scary from time to time, but for the most part it's absolutely amazing."

"Time and relative dimension in space," Sam said under her breath, looking at the TARDIS in the distance.

She had only met these people a few moments ago. They were complete strangers. For all Sam knew, they could be lying about not being Time Agents and gearing up to take her to headquarters for experimentation. But something about the Doctor's offer just felt _right_. As though she _had _to take it.

As though it was—_fate_.

Sally had told Sam about the Doctor over the years, of course.

In fact, she had told Sam so many of the Doctor's stories that he had become like a fabled superhero in her eyes. Instead of fairy-tales before bedtime, she would nag Sally to tell her more about the Doctor's travels. About how he went to far-off places and saw strange sights. About how he helped people and did the impossible, always saving the day in the end.

And here he was, the Doctor, in the flesh, asking her to join him.

There really was no choice in the matter.

"A cup of tea would be nice," Sam said, but the Doctor knew what she really meant.

With a smile he led the way to the TARDIS, knowing in his heart that the journey with this particular strange girl had only just begun.


	9. Chapter 9

**Part 2**

After the tea had been drunk and Sam had told the Doctor and Clara about the trials and tribulations of her life, the Doctor had sent her to bed in one of the guest rooms on the TARDIS. Both Sam and Clara's shock had been evident when they reached the guest room that belonged to Sam and had found it already customised to Sam's needs to the point of perfection.

The Doctor, however, had not been surprised by this.

As he watched Sam walk around the room, staring in awe at her surroundings, he reflected on how much, or how little, he now knew about her.

She was brilliant, for one. It was quite difficult not to notice this. Whether Sam was smarter than him, though, the Doctor had yet to find out.

He knew for a fact that his and Sam's situation was of the River variety; Somehow, they were meeting in reverse. The only difference with this situation was that he felt as though Sam was actually doing it on purpose.

She had known, in some way, to show the Doctor who she would turn out to be before sending him back in time to meet her here where she was just a young, lost girl.

It made him think—well, assured him, really—that he was responsible for the person that Sam would become. He wasn't too sure if this was a good or a bad thing yet.

He reflected on the story that Sam had told them over tea. He had told her to start from the very beginning, and she did. She told him about how she couldn't remember the first six or seven years of her life, but that she knew that she had been happy.

The Doctor wondered if this was just wishful thinking on Sam's part, but he had a feeling that she may have been right.

Sam had then proceeded to recount the first thing she remembered, namely waking up in the room of a girl about the same age as her. She couldn't remember the name, but she could remember that the girl had been frightened. She'd explained that she had accidentally used her powers on the girl and had looked into her future.

Even though it had been so long ago, Sam shuddered when she spoke of the future she saw of the girl.

"It was just so horrible," she had said quietly, "I only saw a few moments, but I could hear what she was thinking. She was trying to decide who she had to leave behind and who she couldn't live without. Every time she came to a decision, she would think 'but he needs me, too' and start all over again."

After that, Sam had told them about being found by Sally. She spoke both fondly and sadly of her, recounting how Sally had named her Samantha Rhi Pierce ( the middle name after Sally's mother) and how they had tried their hand at suburban living.

"It wasn't easy," Sam had laughed, "Sally had never actually lived on Earth, so she had some trial and error when it came to keeping up appearances. The first year, Sally used to pack me a whole roasted chicken for school every day. It was only when my classmates started teasing me and the teachers called her up that Sally was told that it wasn't normal to do that."

Sam had paused then, an unfathomable expression in her grey eyes.

The Doctor knew that she was hurting, but he also knew that there was nothing that he could do for her that would serve as a quick fix to the problem. He had been hurt like her once before, too, and the only thing that had helped him heal was someone kind enough to care and enough time to forget.

That was all he could give Sam.

After telling him and Clara about her childhood, which mostly consisted of her teachers calling her a prodigy (though Sally would have none of it) and monthly brain scans by Hardy (who evidently Sam didn't think very much of), Sam had taken a deep breath before continuing.

She had then told them about a conversation that she had overheard between Hardy and Sally the one afternoon when she returned from school early.

At first, she hadn't thought much of it, but when she heard Sally's overt anger at the other Time Agent, she listened more intently.

They were talking about her, she had realised.

"But I've changed my mind!" Sally was hissing, "She'll never be just some generator of energy. She's so much more than that! If you would just give me the chance to show you how _brilliant_—"

"Well, look at this," Hardy had mocked, "Looks like someone has grown a little too attached to the test subject. You need to look at the bright side of things, rook. You still have a good ten years to go before she turns twenty-five."

Ever since that day, Sam had told them, it had felt as though a sword was hanging over her head. A sword that had the potential to drop at any moment.

And eventually, it did drop.

The Doctor recalled the way Sam had changed when she spoke of the evening that she left Sally. He had felt an overwhelming sense of sympathy towards the young girl when he heard the anguish that was so clear in Sam's voice when she spoke of leaving her life, her everything, behind.

Even now, he realised, as he was standing there and watching Clara and Sam explore the new room, he felt an overwhelming, unexplainable protectiveness towards the girl. He couldn't decide whether the reason for this was just that he cared for the downtrodden, or if, maybe, it ran deeper than that.

Sam just reminded him so much of—

"It even looks lived in," Sam said as she picked up some of the discarded clothing on the floor. She brought one of the items, a shirt, up to her face and inhaled. When she pulled back, her expression was confused. "It smells like me."

The Doctor knew the reason for this, though he kept quiet about it. If his theory that Sam was from his own future was correct— and it was—then the TARDIS had most likely just pulled the first memory she had of Sam from her databanks and had accommodated this memory by adapting the room to look just like how future Sam most likely would have left it.

"Oh my God," Sam said, dropping the clothing in her arms onto the floor. She was moving to the north wall of the room, her eyes darting from side to side to take in the sight in its entirety.

Standing so close to the wall that the tip of her nose almost came in contact with it, Sam reached out a hand and touched one of the photos mounted there.

It was a picture of her and Sally. They were standing arm in arm, laughing at some obscure joke that Sam couldn't even remember. She did remember the day the picture was taken, though.

It was the closest that she and Sally had ever come to travelling the world when, seemingly by chance, they had won a luxury cruise to Madagascar in a contest they had never entered.

The entire wall was covered in images like these. Some, however, depicted memories that Sam couldn't remember having lived.

One in particular grabbed her attention. She was standing with the Doctor and Clara to one side of her and a very handsome young man to the other. The unknown man had an arm around her waist and a sly smile on his face. This smile was mirrored on her own face. It looked as though they were sharing some sort of private joke. For some reason, though there was no outright evidence of it in the picture, she and the young man seemed strangely—intimate.

It unnerved her.

"You probably know that time doesn't move in a linear progression," the Doctor said, startling Sam out of her own little world.

Sam nodded. "Yeah, I read that somewhere. Time is malleable—at any given moment several possibilities of reality exist. Several tiny instances stacked into a precarious little tower of what we know to be true. It only takes one little nudge and everything comes tumbling down, everything changes—like a very large game of Jenga."

The Doctor stared at the nineteen-year-old, for the moment thrown off the track of his own story. Had this teenage girl just used Jenga to explain the progression of time?

Not very many people could do that. In fact, he only knew of one.

It was so very—him.

He shook his head to clear it of the thought. "Couldn't have said it better myself," he said with a smile, "Well, the point I'm getting at is that the TARDIS has the ability to travel in the spaces between the different Jenga blocks. Therefore, the TARDIS is mostly in a state of omnipotent temporal stasis, being present in all time rather than no time. She has, in conclusion, given you a room that belongs to you at any given point in your timeline, supplying you with photographs you saved from memories you haven't necessarily had yet."

"Spoilers," Sam said absently.

"What?" The Doctor asked blankly. Upon hearing the familiar word, his hearts gave a sudden jolt and his mind kicked into overdrive.

Where had she learned that word? If this was the earliest version of Sam he knew, then she most certainly couldn't have met River yet. Or had she? The Doctor gnashed his teeth together, frustrated. The mystery of who Sam was seemed to only be deepening the more he got to know her. He just couldn't discern fact from fiction with her.

"There," Sam pointed, silencing the Doctor's inner monologue. She was gesturing towards a photo in the top-most corner of the wall. It depicted an older version of her looking ravishing in a black cocktail dress. She was standing beside a woman with wild, curly hair.

Just looking at the woman, Sam could already see that there was a certain danger about her. The pair of them seemed to be looking at something interesting off-camera, but it was the inscription written on the picture that really grabbed Sam's attention.

"Thank you for the nice time!" the hot-pink letters read, "It was nice to have someone to share the spoilers with."

Spoilers, she thought, what spoilers?

"Well, Clara and I will leave you to it, then," the Doctor said hurriedly, faking nonchalance very badly.

He was trying extremely hard to downplay the fact that he had just found out that future Sam was possibly the only person in the universe that had information on the secrets that lay in the diary of River Song.

He grabbed Clara by the hand and pulled her towards the door in, once again, a very bad attempt at casual strolling.

Sam looked at the Doctor curiously, picking up on the more-than-a-little obvious fact that something was off.

"Alright," she said slowly. She decided not to pry.

Taking Sam's lack of questions as successful acting on his part, the Doctor manoeuvred himself and Clara toward the hallway. "Sleep tight!" he told Sam before closing the door behind him.

"Doctor?" Clara asked quietly, "Are you alright?"

"No," the Doctor replied curtly, turning on his heel and stalking down the hall. His exit was somewhat marred, however, when he realised that the console room was in the other direction. He turned around, stalking in the opposite direction.

"Doctor!" Clara called, taking large strides to keep pace with the manic speed at which the Doctor flew.

He didn't speak until they reached the console room.

"Doctor, what's going on?" Clara asked.

The Doctor was typing and punching and switching levers on the console at the speed of light. "Too many mysteries—too many things I don't know," he muttered. It was as though he had forgotten that Clara was there.

"Doctor," Clara said assertively.

To her relief, he looked up.

"What is it?" he asked distractedly.

"What are you doing?"

"Samantha Rhi Pierce," he told her, as though this served as explanation enough. He looked at her expectantly.

"Yes, that's Sam," she said, "What about it?"

"But don't you see?" the Doctor said, once again moving around the TARDIS console and punching buttons feverishly, "That isn't her real name! If I can find out who she really is, I can find out where she comes from and why—"

He stopped mid-sentence without noticing, apparently too absorbed in the graphics on the monitor he was now staring at to continue.

Clara sighed; he did this quite a lot. Usually, she would just remind him of her presence and he would continue with his— often somewhat lengthy— stories, but this time she had the good sense not to intrude. Sam was obviously a point of great distress for the Doctor, though she couldn't for the life of her figure out why. She knew too little of the Doctor's personal history to make assumptions.

Now that she thought about it, she really knew next to nothing about the events of his past. How could she? He never made so much as a peep about any of it.

The one thing about Sam that she knew was that she seemed to be a young, female version of the Doctor.

Clara was a teacher, but she had never heard any of the kids that were round about Sam's age talk like that. Whatever Sam was, Clara was quite certain it wasn't human. If she didn't know any better, she would have thought Sam and the Doctor were related.

Which brought another disturbing question to mind…

"Doctor?" Clara asked cautiously. She noted that the Time Lord was still deep in thought, looking so much older than his face let on as he stared at the flashing monitor.

"Yes?" he replied without looking up from his work.

Clara steeled herself before asking the question. "You don't still have any—kids, do you?"

It was clear that this question had caught the Doctor off-guard. For the first time in what felt like ages, Clara suddenly had his full attention.

"What?" he asked, his eyes boring into hers.

Clara met his gaze evenly. He knew full well what she had asked him.

"Why do you ask?" he inquired quietly. His voice was so low and subdued that Clara abruptly felt sorry that she had asked him. It wasn't her place to ask him questions like that.

"I'm sorry," she told him, shaking her head, "I shouldn't have asked you that."

"Why do you ask?" he repeated simply.

"Well, it's just—it's just that you said that you were the only one of your kind and then Sam comes along and you two are just so much alike and, well, I suppose I was just thinking that her tracking you down like that and the way she seemed to know you so well that, if I didn't know any better, I'd say she was like your—"

The words all tumbled out in a stream of incomprehensible gabber and Clara felt her face get warm.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—"Clara started to apologise again, but the Doctor held up a hand for her to keep quiet.

"Ssh," he said, "I'm thinking."

He seemed to ponder something for a moment while the silence stretched on. Clara stared at her feet in embarrassment, shuffling them awkwardly.

"Right," the Doctor finally said, a smile on his face.

"You have a plan?" Clara asked.

"Of sorts," the Doctor replied, clapping his hands together.

"Well? What is it?"

"We do nothing," he told her serenely.

"We do nothing," Clara repeated blankly, "That's your plan?"

"Yes!" he said, smile still in place, "Look, the way I see it, everything that's happened has had a very real, defined purpose. I'm thinking that what we need to do now, and I can't believe I'm saying this, is not to question anything. Something is going to happen eventually, but right now our job is to look after the young, scared Sam we have."

Clara looked at him sceptically. Was the Doctor seriously suggesting that they just _leave it_?

"Alright," she finally conceded, "You're the Time Lord."

Clara didn't miss the fact that the Doctor had never answered her question.


	10. Chapter 10

"So, where do you want to go first?" the Doctor asked, giving Sam a warm smile.

It was the next day and Sam, Clara and the Doctor were all standing around the console. Sam's eyes grew twice in size as she grasped the implications of what the Doctor was asking her.

"You mean I get to choose?" she asked disbelievingly.

"Anywhere you want," the Doctor said, exchanging a knowing smile with Clara.

"Past, present or future," Clara added, "Take your pick."

Sam looked between the two of them, indecision flooding her mind. How many times had she dreamed of this moment? How many different scenarios had she thought of when she had daydreamed of travelling with the Doctor?

All those years spent dreaming, and now she was drawing a blank.

The silence stretched on and Sam felt her cheeks go warm. She was thinking so hard that the Doctor could probably see the wheels in her head turning.

"The Scarlet Junction!" she blurted out as this first thought struck her.

"The what?" Clara asked, her brows knitting together. It seemed that she was going to have to get used to two people's unintelligible vocabularies now.

"It's a planet called Dividuus. It's situated in the Scarlet Junction nebula. I've always wanted to go there," Sam explained excitedly.

She had, indeed. It was Sally's home planet, but through the stories that Sally had told her about it over the years, Sam had come to see it as her own place of origin. In her mind, Dividuus had become a sort of ideal. A place that bore the promise of shiny, new sights if she ever decided on escaping the hum-drum of everyday life.

Ironically, she now longed for the old hum-drum.

"Ah, Dividuus!" the Doctor cried happily, "Yes, I know it well. Exactly half of the planet is covered in dense rainforest, while the other is a desert wasteland," he told Clara, "There's a wall running right around the world separating the two halves. Quite confusing, that. Especially during typhoon season," he flinched.

"So we can go?" Sam asked hopefully.

"Of course we can!" the Doctor exclaimed, flipping a switch as he spoke, "Next stop: Scarlet Junction."

One moment, the Doctor and Clara were pleasantly arguing about what they would do once they had landed (the Doctor wanted to visit the national rock museum, while Clara wanted to meet up with the locals), but the next moment the TARDIS gave such a violent jolt that everyone in the console room was sent sprawling.

The Doctor recovered the fastest, jumping to his feet as all light in the room was abruptly cut off. A few seconds later, the emergency lights in the TARDIS flicked on, casting an eerie, blue glow over all the inhabitants of the Doctor's machine.

"Blimey, that's twice now," Clara muttered as she got to her feet.

"Everyone alright?" the Doctor called, "Clara? Sam?"

"We're fine," Clara told him, helping Sam to her feet.

"What's happened?" Sam asked as she joined the Doctor by the console board.

He was poking and prodding at some exposed wires on the board, running round to the monitor every time a light would flash in response to his prodding.

"Well?" Sam asked him.

The Doctor looked up. Worry coloured his features. "It seems we've come at rather a bad time," he told her.

"We've been shot down," Sam stated, reading the message from the TARDIS in her mind.

"No, no, no, you shouldn't be telling her that, you should be talking to me!" the Doctor shouted at the ceiling, "I'm the one repairing you!"

"Doctor!" Sam hushed him. Her eyes were squeezed shut from concentrating on the TARDIS's voice in her mind, "She says they've got a transmat beam! Quick, you need to engage the TARDIS's cloaking mechanism."

Before the Doctor could respond to this request, Sam's eyes had flown open. She pushed past him and grabbed the sonic screwdriver from his dazed hand, prodding at the wires herself. Quickly, faster than the Doctor would think possible, the console room lights came to life once again. A pleasant, pinging sound rang through the room.

"Ha!" Sam said triumphantly, grinning at her surroundings. Her grin widened ever so slightly as she caught sight of the Doctor's dumbfounded expression.

"How'd you do that?" the Doctor asked blankly.

"The TARDIS showed me," Sam told him with a smile. Then, bemusement twinkling in her eyes, "She said that she would rather tell me than you. Apparently, you don't listen when she tries to tell you how to do things."

"I listen!" the Doctor said indignantly. He turned his eyes to the ceiling, "I listen to you!" he insisted.

The TARDIS gave a loud, slightly sceptical groan.

Clara looked on at the scene between the two, an amused expression playing on her lips. It looked as though the Doctor was finally getting a little taste of his own medicine.

"She says that we'll go undetected as long as we stay put," Sam said, still listening to the TARDIS's voice in her head. She frowned as she met the Doctor's eyes, "Does that mean that we're stuck wherever—whenever— we've landed?"

'It seems so," the Doctor affirmed.

"So, what, do we just—wait out the danger?" Clara asked quizzically.

The Doctor looked at his two companions, a slightly manic smile on his face. "Now where would be the fun in that?" he said excitedly. He led the way to the TARDIS doors and opened them into what lay beyond, "Come along you two, adventure aw—aah!"

The Doctor suddenly gave a stifled cry as he was snatched from the TARDIS doors and was dragged from view.

"Doctor!" Sam and Clara shouted simultaneously.

"Sam, no!" Clara yelled after the young girl as she ran after him.

Bright sunlight clawed at Sam's eyes, causing her to place a shielding hand over her face. She spun around frantically in search of the lost Doctor, but all she could see was sand. It stretched on for miles and miles.

Clara popped her head out of the TARDIS door, finding that only Sam stood on the other side. She walked over to the girl who was standing, dazed, staring into the distance.

"He's gone," Sam said blankly.

…

"So, tell me," the Doctor said conversationally to one of his captors. He strained against the bonds around his hands slightly. The ropes were made from Valirian thread, he noted. He wouldn't be able to break through that.

"Be quiet," the large man said harshly. He and six other, similarly large men were leading the Doctor through the entrance of what seemed to be an impromptu village setup. As they walked, women and children emerged from small huts to stare at the newly arrived party. All of them bore the dark skin and blue eyes of the Fugax race.

"What I want to know," the Doctor continued, ignoring the guard's order, "is why you're being so hostile. If I'm correct—and I am—the Fugax are meant to abhor violence and hostility."

The Doctor was brought to a standstill in front of the largest of the huts. Facing him, a woman stood. She was visibly older than the other villagers. Her importance was further accented by the golden cloak draped about her shoulders and the intricate patterns painted in white around her brilliantly blue eyes. To her side, there stood a handsome, young man in equally flamboyant garb.

"I am Prae," she said in a stately manner, "You have intruded upon our bounds and now you must state your purpose, outsider."

The Doctor took another look at his surroundings, taking in the faces of the people who were congregating around the scene. They were scared. Every last one of them.

"It's the fifty-first century," the Doctor stated, "By this time, the Fugax should be building great cities, becoming leaders in arts, philosophy, engineering—instead you're sitting here in the dirt, barely getting by. Why?"

"Our cities were destroyed," the man standing next to Prae spoke. His voice was rough, harsh. The Doctor noticed a long scar running from the one corner of the young man's face to the other.

"And you are?"

"He is Soter," Prae answered, "He is my grandson. He bears the mark of the enemy that have forced our people to hide from danger in our own territories."

At the mention of this, several cries rang out from the crowd at the Doctor's back.

Cries of indignation, anger— agony.

"The Pugnax," the Doctor breathed.

It had been an infamous, age-old struggle. The Fugax had always hated the Pugnax and the Pugnax had always hated the Fugax. It had been one of the reasons why the wall around Dividuus was built in the first place. The Fugax, dark and blue-eyed, would have one half of the planet, while the Pugnax, light-haired and pale-faced, would have the other half.

"Yes," Prae nodded somberly, "They have broken the wall and laid claim to our desert home. They have declared war against us, though we have done nothing but live in peace with them in the past.

"But that isn't right," the Doctor said with a frown, "The conflict should have been resolved by now. Eventually, the wall breaks down of its own accord. The two races must learn to co-exist, and they do. They create a new race that encapsulates the best of the Fugax and the Pugnax and the planet is better off for it. Those wheels should have been in motion by now, so what's stopping them?"

"The Pugnax have found powerful allies," Prae told him, "They have brought out the worst in our enemies. Where the Pugnax were cruel, their allies have made them merciless. The Pugnax have been hostile in the past, but their allies have now given them a thirst for blood and power unheard of in our histories. I fear that they will not only cause our downfall, but their own as well."

The Doctor felt an uncomfortable flip in the pit of his stomach. "Who exactly are these allies?"

…

"Oh, I can't walk anymore," Sam groaned.

The sun was beating down on her and Clara. Despite the fact that both were wearing large hats, sunglasses and a thick slathering of SPF50, they still seemed to be contracting sunburns.

They had been walking for ages and getting nowhere fast.

"Maybe if we change directions again—?" Clara suggested, though she knew that this would most probably end up being just another futile plan. They had already tried changing direction twice, after all, "Can you still hear the TARDIS?"

"Barely," Sam said, "She's trying to track the Doctor, but she can't use too much energy. She still needs to keep that cloaking device of hers up as well."

"So we're on our own, then," Clara said resignedly.

" 'Fraid so," Sam said. She rubbed the back of her neck absently as she stared out over the wide expanse of nothing.

It really was quite pretty, all the sand and the sun. Had they not been in crisis-mode, Sam would have loved to take a moment to reflect on how brilliant it was that she was actually standing on an alien planet. She had actually _gone _somewhere, rather than sitting in the centre of the four walls of her room that had always felt so constricting.

She would have dwelled on a lot of things if the situation had been different, but at the fact of the matter was that there were more important things to be worrying about at the moment. She had to try and come up with a way to find the Doctor.

Then she spotted a small flash of green on the horizon. She stood on the very tips of her toes, straining to see what it was that lay in the distance.

"What? What is it?" Clara asked, also looking in the direction Sam was.

A large, bright smile spread across Sam's face as she realised what she was looking at. "Yes!" she exclaimed. Before Clara could ask, Sam had grabbed her hand and was pulling her along towards the small, green spot, "Come on!"

Sam ran as fast as her legs could carry her, with Clara trailing behind and calling "What is it?" every now and again. Sam didn't answer, because she was too intent on getting to where she wanted to be.

She was almost certain that the patch of green on the horizon was some form of a tree.

Where there were trees, there was water. Where there was water, there were people.

Sam cried out in relief and joy as they reached the forest. She could hear the soft bubble of a body of water on the other side of the wall that separated the two different halves of the planet.

Clara, on the other hand, wasn't so pleased by the sight. It was one-hundred percent pure jungle on the other side of that wall. In the desert, the sun was your enemy, but in the jungle, everything else was.

Who knew what kinds of creatures were lurking behind that wall?

As Sam enthusiastically started to scale the almost three-metre-tall structure, Clara was still eyeing the trees suspiciously. They seemed to be acting—strangely.

"Sam," Clara called her back, "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

"It's our best shot," Sam shouted back. She was moving at quite an impressive pace, "Come on, if we find help, we can find the Doctor!"

Clara decided that Sam was right and ran her hand over the wall to find a grip. As soon as her hand found the rough protrusion of rock that Sam had used to elevate herself, Clara tried to do the same. This task, however, seemed to be easier said than done as Clara felt her hand slip while pulling herself up, landing her back down on the ground, right on her bum.

She scowled as she heard Sam's laughter ring out from above her head.

"There was a tree right outside my second-storey bedroom when I lived with Sally," Sam explained with a chuckle, "I suppose I got a little climbing practice from sneaking out from there with my friends on school evenings."

"Well, my room was on the ground floor," Clara retorted as she dusted herself off and decided on hoisting herself up onto the wall once more. She succeeded this time, beginning her slow ascension to where Sam now sat perched on top of the wall.

"There we go!" Sam called down to Clara in encouragement, "Go, Spidey, go!"

By the time Clara reached Sam, both of them were laughing gleefully. Sam held out a hand and pulled her up onto the wall beside her.

"Oh," Clara breathed when she caught sight of the scene that lay on the other side of the wall. She smiled, "It's beautiful."

It wasn't the same as the rainforests back home. The trees were taller and darker. Some were such a dark shade of green that they almost seemed black. Some of the trees were draped in vines in brilliant shades of blue and red. The entire forest seemed to have a slight movement to it, though there was no breeze blowing. The river running beneath them was tinged a subtle shade of violet.

Sam smiled at her surroundings. "I know," she said. Then, smile faltering slightly, "It's Pugnax territory."

"What does that mean?"

Sam took a deep breath. "The Pugnax and the Fugax both share the planet Dividuus," she recited the story that Sally had told her just about a thousand times, "The Fugax live in the desert. They're pacifists. They never engage in war, instead choosing to engage in more scholarly activities like art and philosophy," Some sort of anger filled her eyes as she spoke, "The Pugnax, on the other hand—well, all they do is fight. Whether it's with other planets, other species or even each other, they just can't walk away from a fight. They're supposed to be warriors, defenders of the planet in case of attack, but I think that they're the ones who start the wars in the first place."

Sam thought about Hardy. He was Pugnax.

Shortly before she had left Sally, she had overheard the conversation between her and Hardy on the communicator. There had been screaming, a woman, in the background when Hardy was speaking. When Sally had asked about it, Sam had heard Hardy's answer. It still sent chills up her spine just thinking about it.

_It isn't torture if it serves a greater purpose._

She had stopped listening after that.

That was what the Pugnax were. Merciless, unfeeling and blood-thirsty.

"Sam!" Clara shrieked suddenly.

Sam barely had time to look up before the shot was fired. It hit her squarely in the shoulder, sending her flying backwards off the wall. She landed on her back in the desert sand, all the air knocked out of her.

Everything went black.

Clara stared down at Sam in horror.

Was she unconscious or—or—

Clara hadn't seen where the shot was fired from. She could just remember spotting a glint of metal in the trees above them and getting a very, very bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. Of all the panicked thoughts running through her mind, one thought in particular stood out.

She was supposed to protect Sam.

Clara was already manoeuvring her way down the wall to where Sam lay when a horrible, rasping voice stopped her in her tracks.

"Stop!" it said, "You will surrender or be exterminated!"


	11. Chapter 11

The Doctor was running at the speed of light back to the TARDIS. The moment that the word had been said, the word that always seemed to follow him like a plague, he had set of running.

_Dalek._

A set of four Fugax guards were following him down the desert road leading to his machine.

Well—they were chasing him.

He hadn't exactly excused himself with High Minister Prae before leaving the village. Also, he was still technically their prisoner.

The Doctor stopped at the spot where he knew he had parked, holding up a finger as the guards took this opportunity to move in on him.

"Hold on," he told them, "I can help you. Just let me find my ship and I'll be sure to take care of your Dalek problem."

The guards looked at each other. They made him wait impatiently for a long moment before they came to a mute decision. "Proceed," one of the guards finally told him, "Where is this ship you speak of?"

The Doctor started feeling around in the air for his invisible TARDIS. This was exactly why he'd broken the cloaking device in the first place.

The guards looked at him sceptically as their waiting for him to come up with something lengthened. The Doctor gave an awkward chuckle, his hands flailing around in the air and coming up with nothing.

"I know how this must look," he told them, "but honestly, she was right—ha!" His hand encountered the invisible surface of his machine. He grinned, "There you are, Sexy."

He felt around until he was reasonably sure he had found the door. He clicked his fingers. The door to the console room sprang open—on the opposite side of where he was standing. Paying this no mind, the Doctor entered.

"Sam? Clara?" He called, looking at the empty console room.

There was no answer.

"Clara? Sam?" he tried again. He stuck his head down one of the hallways leading from the console room, but once again, not a soul replied. For all intents and purposes, the TARDIS seemed to be completely abandoned.

"It's _one _rule!" the Doctor said to himself hopelessly as he moved to join the guards.

"It seems that my friends have wandered off," he told the party outside, "and if I know them, they've most likely gotten themselves into trouble by now. So, new plan, I'm going to go get them and then I'll help you just as soon as I've found them."

The guards looked at him incredulously for a moment. Then, they moved in. Before he knew it, the Doctor was tied up again.

"Tough crowd," he muttered.

…

Sam opened her eyes.

"Oh, thank goodness," she heard someone breathe at her side.

Sam tried to push herself into a sitting position, but then groaned at the pain this action caused her.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," a male voice said.

She fell back down onto the ground. Everything around her was dark and she could hear the sound of a dripping pipe coming from not too far away. Someone was holding her hand.

"Sam, can you hear me?"

She recognised the voice, Sam thought. Her mind was foggy; she couldn't think straight. What had happened to her?

She tried to think back to the last thing she remembered. She and Clara had climbed the wall separating the two halves of Dividuus—

Clara. _That_ was who the voice belonged to!

It all came rushing back. They had been sitting on the wall, looking at the scenery, when Clara had called for her to look out. It had been too late; she was shot. Sam remembered thinking that she was going to die when she hit the ground. She hadn't believed that she'd gotten to travel with the Doctor only to have it end so soon…

But it didn't, it seemed.

"Clara?" Sam murmured wearily.

Clara squeezed her hand. "Yes, it's me," she said.

"Where are we?" the sentence was slightly garbled, but Sam was pleased with herself for having managed to say it. Speaking seemed to focus the pain she felt to her upper torso. She could only guess at all the things she must have broken in the fall.

"Maximum security Pugnax holding cell," a completely different voice said. Sam realised that it was the male voice from before. The voice had a thick American accent.

What was an American doing this far from the 51st century American colonies?

"Who's that?" Sam muttered, managing to speak more clearly. Thankfully, her eyes seemed to be adjusting, though that just meant a better view of the ceiling in her current position.

"He's a prisoner like us," Clara told her, "Probably saved your life, too. He patched you up when they put us in the cell."

"Help me up," Sam said, having had enough of all the lying about. She just wasn't built for conversation without eye-contact.

"Oh no, I don't think you should—" Clara started.

"It's alright," the other voice interrupted her, "I would want a bird's eye view, too, if I was in her predicament."

"Alright then," Clara said, still a little doubtful.

Sam gave a sharp gasp of pain as Clara helped her into a sitting position. The gasp she gave seemed to cause the pain to worsen. Even just breathing hurt.

Feeling broken, Sam squinted in the darkness at the two figures looking back at her.

"Hold on," the larger of the two said. He seemed to put a hand in his pocket, pulling out something unidentifiable. Then, Sam heard a scratching sound and the small cell was filled with dull light from the flame of the match the man had lit.

"Ever lasting matches," he said with a grin, "Nifty little tool I carry with me for situations like these."

Sam was staring. The man who was their fellow prisoner was quite handsome.

Well—very, actually.

His eyes were a piercing blue, his hair brown and he wore the kind of devilish grin that mothers warned their daughters to stay away from. But that wasn't the reason that Sam was looking at him with such an astounded expression.

It was him. It was the man from the picture in her bedroom.

"Agent Alex Jenkins," he introduced himself cockily, "I'm the one who saved your life."

Sam shoved the curiosity she was feeling towards the man down, trying to focus instead on their current situation. It was no use wondering about things that hadn't happened yet. Especially things that she wasn't actually supposed to know about.

Perhaps this would be the start of those things, though…

Hold on, did he just call himself an _agent_?

When Sam noticed the vortex manipulator around his arm, all her positive preconceptions of him disappeared.

He was one of them.

Forgetting for the moment about the state her body was in, Sam manoeuvred herself as far away from the young man as the tiny cell would allow her. Only when her back hit the bars of the cell painfully, did she realise what a stupid decision it had been to move. She groaned and slumped to the floor as the intensity of the pain caused her vision to blur.

"Sam!" Clara exclaimed, "What are you doing?"

"He's a—Time—Agent," she gasped between her laboured breaths.

"Yeah," Agent Jenkins said slowly, "Aren't you?"

_Oh_, Sam thought. She was wearing Sally's vortex manipulator. The last trip she'd made to central London appeared to have tapped out any temporal energy the old hunk of junk had left, but Sam wore it anyway. It was her way of keeping Sally close.

Maybe it would turn out to be her saving grace as well.

"Yes," Sam said, sitting upright again, "Of course we are. Just testing to see if you were. Anyhow, you don't happen to have a link to the Agency, do you? I lost my communicator," she batted her eyelashes a little at the Time Agent, though she didn't have a clear enough idea of the state of her face to determine if this would work.

Agent Jenkins looked at her suspiciously.

So eyelash batting was out of the question, then.

"What's your badge ID number?" he asked her.

"5976789," Sam recited Sally's ID perfectly.

Sally had forced her to memorise the number years ago. When Sam had asked why, Sally had said "because" and left it at that. It turned out that Sally knew what she was doing after all.

Agent Jenkins typed the number into his vortex manipulator. He had one of those fancy manipulators that could do everything except bring you breakfast in bed.

Upon entering the number, the tiny screen on his wrist flashed green. "So, Agent S. Pierce, huh?" he read the name on the screen, "It says here that you're supposed to be busy with a 'very important research mission' on 21st century Earth. What are you doing here, then?"

"Oh, you know," Sam gave a shrug and a slight flinch at the stabbing ache in her shoulder, "I bore easily."

"Oh, hold on," he said as something else flashed onto the screen. His eyebrows shot up when he read the words, "Says here that there's a warrant out for your arrest. Harbouring a fugitive, are we?"

A wave of horror washed over Sam.

Sally had lied to her about being fine. Of course she did. She didn't really think that the Time Agents would let Sally off scot-free, did she?

"I—I—" Sam stuttered.

Then, Agent Jenkins gave her a wry smile. "Don't worry," he told her, smile widening into a grin, "I'm not going to arrest you."

The girls stared at him incredulously for a few seconds. Clara opened her mouth, astounded. "Huh?" was her very eloquent reply.

"That would be pretty hypocritical of me," he continued, "seeing as the Time Agents are after me, too."

"Hold on," Sam said, finding her voice," are you telling me that there's a warrant out for your arrest as well? Is this a wind-up?'

"No jokes," he said earnestly.

"Why?" Sam asked. Then, realising how rude she sounded and clearing her throat awkwardly, "If I may ask, of course."

Agent Jenkins shrugged. "Did what I thought was right instead of doing what the Agency told me to do," he looked at her slyly, "much like yourself, I'm assuming."

Instantly, Sam knew that he understood.

Whatever her connection with Agent Jenkins was—or would be, at least— she could see what it was rooted in. They both knew what it felt like to have unbelievable odds stacked against them. On some fundamental level, they were the same.

It was Clara's turn to clear her throat awkwardly.

Sam looked up and realised with embarrassing clarity that she had been staring at him for a little over two minutes. She felt her cheeks go warm and was thankful for the bad lighting in the small cell.

"So," Sam said, hastily changing the subject, "Have we thought of a way to get out of here yet?"

"We've been pretty busy," Clara told her, "You know, with you almost dying and all."

"I'm fine now, though," Sam insisted.

"No, you're not," Agent Jenkins said, "and even if you were, there'd be no way for us to escape. This is a Pugnax prison. The race may be limited in a lot of fields, but security ain't one of them. It'd be a miracle if we ever got out of here."

"Did someone say miracle?" a voice rang out from the other side of the prison bars.

"Doctor!" Sam and Clara cried out simultaneously.

Miraculously as the Doctor had put it, he came strolling up to the cell, sonic screwdriver in hand and a massive grin on his face. "And you thought I'd abandoned you!" he said cheerily.

"But how did you manage it?" Clara inquired, "We saw it; someone took you from the TARDIS and you were gone!" she paused, "Was it the Daleks?"

"No," he said. He looked over his shoulder angrily at something in the darkness, "It was actually the other side of the spectrum that took me. The _peaceful _side!" He stressed the word "peaceful" with another angry look over his shoulder.

"The Fugax?" Sam said with a frown, "They're a passive race. They don't take people prisoner."

"Exactly what I said!" the Doctor implored, "Nonetheless, after they had taken me prisoner. _Twice_," another angry look over his shoulder, "I explained to High Minister Prae that I would be absolutely useless to them if I didn't have my associates by my side. We didn't have to look for very long, me being clever and the guards knowing their way around the rainforest, to find you lot."

"Guards?" Agent Jenkins asked.

"Ye—" the Doctor turned his gaze to Agent Jenkins, only to have the grin swiftly wiped off his face. It was as though the Doctor had seen a ghost.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, awestruck.

"I'm sorry," Agent Jenkins said slowly. He seemed confused as to why the Doctor was staring at him in such a way, "have we met?" he asked.

"Are you playing a practical joke on me?" the Doctor asked incredulously, "This is hardly the place or the time! Why are you here?"

Agent Jenkins shook his head uncomprehendingly. He met Sam and Clara's eyes to see if they had understood something in the Doctor's actions that he was missing. Their faces, however, were just as quizzical as his.

"I have no idea who you are," he told the Doctor bluntly.

The Doctor looked at Jack Harkness blankly. In his mind, he was running through different reasons for Jack's apparent memory loss at just about a thousand miles per hour. Was this some sinister plot aimed at him? Did Jack land himself in trouble? Maybe he just hit his head?

Only the most obvious reason was evading him.

As the Doctor came to the realisation, he let out a quick "Oh!" and slapped himself about the forehead. Then he moved forward, pressing himself tightly against the bars and invading Jack's personal space.

Agent Jenkins took a jerky step backwards as the Doctor moved. The girls looked at the Time Lord as though he had lost his mind.

"Doctor!" Clara implored.

The Doctor ignored their outrage. His eyes widened as he continued to stare at the confused man. He eventually took two steps back, surveying the Time Agent as though he were a fine work of art.

"What's your name?" the Doctor asked him.

"Alex Jenkins."

The Doctor nodded, making mental notes. "How old are you?"

Agent Jenkins looked at him incredulously for a moment before answering. "I'm twenty-one," he said.

"Just twenty-one?" the Doctor pressed, "Not, say, one-hundred twenty-one? Twenty-one hundred, maybe?"

"Just twenty-one," Agent Jenkins insisted.

"Fancy that," the Doctor said in awe. He shook himself and smiled at the distraught Time Agent, "Nice to meet you, Alex Jenkins, I'm the Doctor and—" he checked something over his shoulder again, "and we should be leaving right now!"

Just as he said the words, a horrible wailing sounded from the darkness beyond the cell. Accompanying the chorus, shouts of "exterminate!" could be heard.

The Doctor moved in a flash, opening the cell door with his sonic screwdriver and dropping to his haunches at Sam's side. "I brought some Fugax guards with me," he told her softly, "They're waiting outside. Can you walk or should I get one of them to carry you?"

"I'll carry her," Agent Jenkins said before Sam could answer. He was already lifting her up into his arms.

"Alright," the Doctor said, his eyes flitting between the Agent's and Sam's faces, "Good work, Alex—can I call you Alex?"

"Why not?" Alex gave a shrug, "We seem to know each other so well, anyway."

The Doctor grinned. "Good man," he said before setting off.

The entire party bounded into the unknown.


	12. Chapter 12

The prison was alive with a chorus of wailing alarms and shouts of _Exterminate!_. The Doctor led the party through the halls, expertly navigating his way back to the entranceway he and the guards had used.

"We'll have to find out where these Daleks came from in the first place," he was telling Clara as they ran, "We can't leave until I've taken care of them. They're my responsibility."

Clara nodded and cast a worried glance over her shoulder. Alex was right behind them with Sam in his arms. His eyes were also glancing down worriedly at the girl every few seconds. She seemed to be growing paler and paler.

"We can't take her along with us," Clara told the Doctor decisively.

"I was never planning to," the Doctor said, grimacing but not looking at Sam, "That's why we're heading for the exit."

Just as he said it, the group rounded a corner and was blinded by a stark light signalling that they had found the outside world. Sam shielded her eyes against the stark light feebly, but she was aware that it was getting harder and harder to move her limbs. She also knew that the pain she was feeling was becoming more evident.

"You patched me up," Sam told Alex quietly, "But you only did it temporarily."

He looked down at her and she saw something flash in his eyes. It was there and gone too quickly for her to discern what it was, though. "Yeah," he said.

"Right," the Doctor stopped just short of exiting the building. He turned to look at Alex seriously, still not acknowledging Sam's existence, "Clara and I are going to go back down to sort this out, but I want you to take Sam back to the village. The guards will show you the way."

Before Alex could reply, Sam was interjecting. "Hold on, you're not going to take the guards with you? You'll get yourselves killed!"

The Doctor sighed and looked down at her. "No, we won't," he told her.

"What? You and Clara up against hundreds of Daleks? I read the history books—they have an entire army of the things hidden in here!"

"And what did those history books say happened to that army?" the Doctor asked, kneeling down to be at eye-level with her.

Sam stopped short. "It said that you stopped them," she conceded.

The Doctor grinned, touching a hand to her cheek. "Exactly," he said. He stood up and motioned the guards over to Alex's side. Then he turned to look at the Time Agent once again. "Keep her safe," was all he told him.

Then they were running in the rainforest. Sam couldn't much turn her head as it was, but from what she managed to do she could see that the prison that they had just run out of was massive. Just about three times the size of the Empire State building in New York, she calculated in her head.

And the whole thing was crawling with Daleks…

"Stop worrying," Alex told her as he ran.

"That's easy for you to say," she scoffed, "You just met us. You don't even care."

"You're people, just like me," he said matter-of-factly, "You got captured, just like me. And then your Doctor saved me with you. I care."

Sam was silent for a few moments, listening to Alex's steady footfalls as well as those of the guards they were following.

They ran for quite a while before the group slowed their pace, seemingly deciding that they were a sufficient distance from any immediate danger.

"Thank you for saving me," Sam told Alex. She realised that she hadn't even told him this before.

Alex grinned, keeping his eyes on the path ahead of him. "Hey, pretty girl like you, I couldn't just let you die on me, now could I? Not before asking you out for a drink, at least."

Sam suppressed a smile. "Oh, I bet you use that line on all the half-dead girls you find."

He looked down at her and gave a wink. "Did it work on you, though?" he asked her.

Sam grinned. A part of her couldn't believe that she was actually flirting in a situation like this, but another part of her was telling that part of her to shut up. "We'll see," she told him in the most perfect of blasé tones.

Alex laughed. "Looking forward to it," he said.

They walked for about an hour without talking again after that. After a while of hearing the soothing rhythm of Alex's footsteps beneath her and because of the general exhaustion she felt from almost having died, Sam found herself dozing.

"Hey," Alex shook her slightly when he noticed what she was doing, "Don't fall asleep. You have a pretty bad concussion from Kamikaze-styling off that wall."

"Charming," she muttered sleepily at his remark, causing him to chuckle. She looked at him, sighing resignedly, "Alright then, if I can't sleep, keep me awake."

"Well, how am I supposed to do that?"

"I don't know," she waggled her eyebrows at him, putting on her best Time Agency Commander voice, "Use your resources, Agent."

Just before he could retort with what would have been, no doubt, more flirting, a guard at the front called for them to stop. Sam was surprised when she saw that they had already made it to the wall separating the two halves of the world.

"Whoa, we moved fast," she said.

"Had to," Alex told her curtly, "You need to be taken to see a medical specialist. I've got some first-aid training, but I'm hardly a doctor."

Sam nodded. Then her eyebrows shot up as she realised something. "Hold on, are we going to have to scale that thing?" she looked uneasily at the wall. Just thinking about trying to climb something in her state was causing her stomach to go all queasy.

"_We_ are," he said, squinting as he looked at the topmost point of the wall. He turned to her and gave a bemused grin, "You'll be getting some assistance."

"Wha—" she groaned when she saw the guards setting up the pulley system, "You're going to hoist me over the wall like a bloody bag of bricks?"

"Now, don't be so pessimistic," he chided playfully as he moved to place her gently in the makeshift hammock they were going to hoist her up in, "Look at the bright side of things; you're gonna have a really nice time just lying around while the rest of us do all the work. If you ask me, you're having a pretty relaxing trip compared to me."

"Yeah, despite—you know—the whole being-mortally-injured thing," Sam retorted.

"Hey, you can't get _all _the perks, now can you?"

She laughed, grateful that he'd actually made her feel better. She lay down in the hammock, which was really quite comfortable and, as Alex had put it, let the others do all the work. The guards that were already at the top of the wall hoisted her up, and she began her slow ascent to the top. Alex was climbing beside her at much the same pace.

"So, what are you doing on Dividuus anyway?" she asked him.

"Well," he grunted in an effort to pull himself up on the grips that were becoming fewer and further in-between the higher he went, "It was actually just luck of the draw, I guess. Well, I say luck; I was being chased and I typed some random coordinates into my manipulator. I was so glad that I hadn't just popped out somewhere in the middle of space when I arrived here that I completely missed the fact that I'd landed in the middle of a Pugnax strategy meeting. Long story short, they thought I was a spy and locked me up for interrogation."

"Wow," Sam winced, "That must not have been optimal."

"No," he laughed, "And it ended me up stranded on this planet for months. Damn vortex manipulator short-circuited when I took my last trip."

"You should let me take a look at it for you," she told him.

"Oh? You're good with mechanics?"

"I'm—capable," she said uncertainly, "I've been getting better at it, though. Since travelling with the Doctor. I found a bunch of books on temporal technology in my room and I've been studying them quite closely."

"So, you and the Doctor are you, like—related or something?" he asked her.

She raised an eyebrow and laughed. "Why would you say that?"

"Well, he seemed pretty protective of you back there," Alex said slowly, "He looks too young to be your dad, though. So, I'm guessing—older brother? Cousin, maybe?"

Sam frowned. "No, I'm just travelling with him and Clara for a bit. Just met the both of them a few days ago, actually. They've been really good about it. I've had a tough time lately and—well, they've been helping me cope."

The hammock reached the top of the wall and the guards quickly passed it over from one to another until they had placed her in a ready position for her descent down the other side of the wall. This side's trip was much faster. In a matter of minutes, Sam was being lowered onto the sandy earth of the desert terrain.

Alex landed beside her with a thump, having jumped the last little way just before he'd reached the bottom. He lifted her gently into his arms once again, and Sam couldn't help but feel a little more content there than she had in the hammock.

"Cope?" he asked her.

"Hmm?" she frowned confusedly.

"You said the Doctor and Clara have been helping you cope. Cope with what?"

"Oh," she breathed out a sigh, flinching at the pain in her chest and upper-torso. She had to stop doing that, "It's a really long story."

Alex looked at their barren surroundings pointedly and then back at her. "It's a really long walk," he replied.

"Alright," Sam conceded, "I'll tell you."

And she did. She told him everything. She told him even more than she'd told the Doctor and Clara, adding in little commentaries about how she had felt during certain times in her life and how she had dealt with certain issues. While carrying her, he listened intently to every word she said, only interrupting now and then to poke fun at her.

"Hold on, hold on," he said, laughing, "You didn't learn to ride a bike until you were _sixteen_? Quantum physics, _that_ you mastered by the time you were eight, but you only learned to balance on two wheels eight years later?"

"Hey!" she told him indignantly, "It's unnatural, driving around on two wheels. The human race has moved past that point by now. That's why we have cars!"

"Sam," he grinned, "I think I just decided that that's my favourite thing about you."

She'd rolled her eyes at that.

By the time they reached the village, Sam felt as though she'd known Alex for years. It was an odd feeling, trusting someone so quickly. But she did.

The sun was just setting, and Sam was beginning to get cold. Really cold. Something in the back of her mind told her that this really had nothing with the weather, though. Alex had told her himself that he'd only fixed her up temporarily, after all. She had a feeling that this was the end of that temporary fix.

Alex noticed it, too. Looking down at her drooping eyelids and her starkly white skin he could see that she wasn't going to hold out much longer. He moved to the front of the group urgently, looking out over the crowd of village inhabitants to anyone who resembled a medic.

An elderly woman moved forward. She carried a staff in her hand and intricate braiding decorated her head. She held out her arms, dropping the staff on the ground. "I am Healer Rhi Col," she told him, "I will take this woman to my quarters."

"No, she doesn't need a healer," he insisted, "She needs a qualified doctor. She needs one _now._"

"Healer Rhi is our finest doctor," a guard to his side told him, "She will help your woman."

"She's not my woman," he said, but he handed Sam over all the same. Her eyes were closed. She had fallen asleep. Or unconscious.

Neither scenario was exactly wanted.

…

Sam opened her eyes to sunlight warming her face. She sat upright, looking around her confusedly. She was making a habit of waking up in strange places. Presently, she seemed to be in some sort of hut. She was lying on a mattress in a corner of the room and had a good vantage point of her surroundings; a bunch of odd contraptions that she didn't recognise and phials of things she _most certainly_ didn't recognise.

Then she realised that she wasn't actually in any pain. Her eyes grew wide for a moment, before a wide smile spread across her face.

So Alex really had come through in the end, it seemed.

As a small breeze blew into the hut and across her body, she realised something else. This time with a jolt of horror.

She was completely naked!

She pulled the blanket on her mattress up to her chin quicker than she would think possible. And just in time, too.

"Hello?" a head popped into the doorway. Alex's head.

"Oh, you're awake!" he grinned when he spotted her, staring wide-eyed at him.

"Don't come in!" she squeaked as he made to enter, "I'm not exactly—umm—decent, over here."

His eyes raked over her covered torso once before his grin widened. "Oh! Yeah, forgot about that," he said brightly, "They had to take your clothes for the healer to do her business. They put them in there somewhere for you, if you want to—I don't know—look for them."

Sam narrowed her eyes at him. "_Sure _you forgot," she said sceptically. Then she looked around her, "But I suppose I am going to have to look for them…"

She looked at Alex pointedly where he now stood leaning in the doorway.

He looked back at her just as pointedly, grin still on his face.

"I'll wait," he told her innocently.

"_You'll _leave," she clarified adamantly.

He chuckled but didn't need to be told twice. He left her to it.

As she watched him leave, Sam allowed herself a small smile.

Then she set about the task of finding her clothes. And what a task it was; she probably spent half an hour turning over every single piece of furniture in the room and rifling through every object that had the ability to contain other objects. The thing that tipped her off in the end was the flash of pink she caught underneath a nondescript pile of home remedy recipes. Two seconds later, she was changing into her outfit from the previous day.

She idly wondered if this was how it always was with the Doctor; having to wear the same clothes for days when he struck up a fancy that didn't quite go as planned.

Just as she was pulling on her second trainer, someone appeared in the doorway again. Thinking it was Alex, Sam was immediately reproachful. "Alex! I thought I told you—" she looked up and realised that it was an elderly woman that was watching her.

"Hi," she said, getting up, "You must be the healer."

"I am," the woman said, "I am Healer Rhi and you are Samantha."

She smiled, bringing her hands up to her face and bending her knees slightly, clapping twice. A sign of respect in the Fugax culture. "Thank you," she told her.

"You are very welcome," the healer gave a small smile, "And now I believe you must get back to your friend. He has told me to tell you that he is waiting for you."

Sam rolled her eyes and started for the doorway. "I'm sure he is," she muttered.

She was just about to exit when her shoulder accidently brushed up against the old woman. As she did this, Sam only had a split second to feel the familiar flutter in her brain, followed by a wave of power crashing through her system. She stood stock still, one part of her horrified at what was happening and another part of her curious as to why it was happening now.

She knew her vision was going to cut out next; that soon she was going to be facing yet another horrible future.

But it never came.

Instead, the healer's hands latched onto Sam's shoulders and the strangest sensation was sent through her body. It was as though Healer Rhi was retracting the wave of power from her. Pulling it out through her shoulders.

Then the healer opened her eyes and they were glowing a bright gold. Sam gasped at the sight that Sally had been faced with so many times over the years that she'd taught Sam to control her power. Had she also been this frightening every time she'd lost control?

"She burnt like the sun," Healer Rhi whispered, "She saw everything; all that is, all that was, all that ever could be. She divided the atoms of existence and she saw into the vortex of time."

The words sent a jolt through Sam. Like an electric shock.

"Yes," Sam suddenly found herself answering to the enigmatic being. Her fear had disappeared, only to be replaced with desperation, "Yes, I can see into the time vortex! Please, Healer Rhi, do you know what it means?" her heart was pounding so frantically it hurt, "Do you know what I am?"

"No," she answered, looking Sam straight in the eye, "Not you."

Sam looked at her mutely, not understanding. She shook her head with a frown, looking at the glowing eyes.

It was silent for a long moment before the healer spoke again.

"Your mother," she said.


	13. Chapter 13

Sam looked at the healer blankly, not processing the words. She noticed that the glow was fading from the old woman's eyes. The episode was ending.

Sam grasped her shoulders tightly, trying to salvage the enigmatic knowledge before it faded completely. "What do you mean 'my mother'?!" she all but screamed at the glowing eyes, "Please, do you know something about her?! DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?!"

But the glow was disappearing, leaving nothing but a frail, elderly woman in its wake. Said woman crumpled into Sam's arms as the last of the temporal energy faded away, causing Sam's grip to move from her shoulders to her underarms. She dragged Healer Rhi to the mattress she had woken up on, laying her down as gently as she could.

"Sam!" she heard rapid footsteps approaching from outside. Moments later, Sam caught a glimpse of Alex in her peripheral vision, looking her up and down with concern.

"Thought I told you to wait outside," Sam said softly, still surveying the unconscious woman. A strange numbness was spreading through her entire body. Two words were pounding loudly into every inch of her psyche.

_Your mother._

Her mother. She had a mother.

Of course she did, she'd always known that.

But also, she hadn't. She hadn't known _what _she was. She'd even speculated that there was a possibility that her species of—whatever— didn't even _have _parents. That was a possibility, wasn't it? Everything was a possibility, after all. Maybe she'd been created in some sort of laboratory. Maybe she was some sort of experiment.

She'd let herself believe that this was a very much viable option. Just a little. It was easier to accept this as her point of origin than to think that she'd once had a planet of her own, a place where she'd lived and real parents who had cared for her. Thoughts like those, fanciful thoughts, only brought up a bunch of painful questions that would likely always remain unanswered.

What had happened to all of it? Where were they?

Were they dead?

"Sam."

She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see Alex looking down at her worriedly. "What happened?" he asked her, casting an eye over the unconscious healer, "Did you do that?"

"N—" she almost protested, before stopping and thinking about the situation, "Yes," she told him in surprise, looking at the woman guiltily, "Yes, I suppose I did."

Alex let go of her shoulders without another word and moved over to the woman's side. He crouched down and placed two fingers just beneath her ear, feeling for a pulse. When he looked up, his eyes were relieved. "She's alive."

Sam released a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding. That breath, however, resumed its strained position in her lungs when Alex came upright and fixed her with a suspicious gaze. "Didn't know you were one for randomly attacking little old ladies," he said, his eyes narrowing slightly.

During their talk the previous day, Sam had been slightly delirious from the mixture of pain and heightened adrenaline she'd been running on throughout the entire day. This had caused her to spill more than a little bit of her guts to the Time Agent on her life story and personal details. Caused her to trust him, which she still didn't believe had been a mistake.

But even through all the excitement of being in mortal peril, she'd had the common sense in her to steer clear of talking about her biggest secret: her abilities to see into people's timelines.

That was the one thing about her that the Doctor and Clara knew and Alex didn't. And it was going to stay that way. She trusted him, liked him and—well, _liked _him a little, too, but she knew that telling a Time Agent, rebel or no, about her being the Time Agency's ultimate bounty was just asking for trouble.

It had been something drilled into her since she was a child, after all. Don't tell anyone about your powers.

"I don't make a habit out of it," she said lightly, trying to change the tense atmosphere that had grown between the two of them.

"So why this one, then?" he asked, not easily swayed by her joking smile.

Sam shrugged. "She said—something," she danced around the truth precariously, "Umm, something that—surprised me, and I—"

"You knocked her unconscious?" Alex asked, raising an eyebrow.

She could feel a hot blush creeping into her cheeks. "Er, yes," she said, trying not to wince at her very, very bad lying. She'd never really been good at spinning stories on cue, but this really was ridiculous.

"So, you were talking to her when she told you something surprising, and instead of, you know, acting _surprised_, you decided to knock her unconscious?" he asked sceptically.

"Yes. That's what happened," she said, feeling a tiny bit mortified.

He looked at her with those narrowed eyes for two seconds longer, before deciding to drop it. It really was none of his concern, after all. This girl was none of his concern. He didn't have time to worry about Sam's troubles when he had his own beckoning.

Nope. None of his concern.

"What did she tell you?" he asked her, effectively not dropping it.

"She told me that she knew something about my mother," she answered quietly. About this much she could be truthful, at least.

As she said the words, the realisation struck her anew.

Somewhere out there, was her mother.

"What, like your real mom?" Alex's brows knitted together, "I thought you said no one knew anything about your parents?"

"Exactly," she sighed, "It's been that way my entire life. No one could tell me what I was, because technically, I didn't exist. No species of alien like me."

"That's weird," he was frowning outright now, "That's actually not the first I've heard of something like that happening. When I was back at the Agency, I heard one of the higher-ups talking about some kind of test subject that the exact same thing had happened to. Agent Hardy—now there's a real f—"

Sam raised her eyebrows.

"Well, he's not a very nice guy," Alex said disdainfully.

She nodded. "I know," she said, unable to keep the contempt out of her voice, "He's a monster."

"Still, I guess not even the Time Agency's databanks are perfect," he gave a shrug, "Some alien species are just more elusive than others," he gave her an appealing grin, "You're probably just special."

Sam smiled back cheekily, her tongue sticking out ever so slightly. Alex liked that smile; it had personality.

"All this flattery, you'd start to think you were infatuated with me or something!"

"Hey, the heart wants what it wants," he retorted with feigned gravitas.

She giggled. "Yeah, sure. The _heart_."

Then a shout from outside cut through their flirting, causing both Sam and Alex to look in the direction of the noise. When their heads whipped back and their eyes met, both knew the next course of action without having to say it.

Alex grabbed her hand tightly in his. "Come on."

All the people in the village were huddled around a central point that was hidden from view. Looking at the joy that had replaced their fearful expressions, Sam had a pretty good idea of what—or, in fact, _who_—was at the centre of the crowd. Excitedly, Sam dropped Alex's hand and bounded towards the people, pushing and shoving enthusiastically until she was standing in the front row of spectators.

"Sam!" the Doctor and Clara cried out simultaneously when they spotted her.

Clara reached her first, immediately pulling her into a hug and fixing her with a huge grin once she pulled back. "So, not dead then, I see," she said cheerily.

"Nope," Sam grinned back, popping the "p", "And you two seem to have made it out alive too, I see. You're going to have to tell me how you managed that."

"Faith, trust and pixie dust, as Peter Pan would say," the Doctor quipped with a smile as he appeared at her side, "Brilliant story, Peter Pan. I've read it just about five thousand times. That's not an exaggeration, by the way. Well, maybe a bit of an understatement. To be precise, I've read it five-thousand-eight-hundred-sixty-nine and a half times. Funny thing, reading a book halfway. Can never really decide which half I like better. I mean, first half you get the whole introduction and background part of the story, but the second half has most of the developments and that satisfying resolution. Mind you, I don't imagine the resolution would be as satisfying if you hadn't actually read the first half of the story so as to know what's going on, so maybe—"

"Doctor," Clara interrupted his babbling.

"Ah, right," he looked at Sam with evident relief in his eyes, "You're alive." He pulled her into a firm hug for a moment and, pulling back, proceeded to pat her shoulders down to her hands and up again to her face.

He cupped her cheeks softly."Jeopardy-friendly Samantha," he murmured almost to himself.

Alex finally made it to the front of the crowd. He spotted Sam standing with the Doctor and Clara and went over to join her.

"Oh, so this one's still here too, then?" the Doctor smiled at him, "A captain never abandons his ship!"

"What?" Alex frowned at the strange man.

"You'll understand when you're older," the Doctor winked at him conspiratorially, looking as though he was very much enjoying some kind of personal joke.

"So, our work done here, then?" Sam asked.

"Almost," the Doctor reprieved, "First I need to find a Healer Rhi Col."

Sam and Alex exchanged a look. "She's kind of—indisposed at the moment," Sam said embarrassedly.

"Sam knocked her unconscious," Alex added, trying not to grin at the expression that had manifested on Sam's face. She looked like she'd just been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

"Why'd you do that?" the Doctor looked slightly disgruntled at this.

"Why do you need to find her?" Sam countered.

The Doctor stepped aside to reveal a woman standing at Clara's back. Clara helped the woman step forward by offering her arm for the woman to lean on.

The woman was pregnant. Very pregnant.

"Hello," Sam smiled at her.

"Tsitsi was held captive like us, Sam," Clara told her, "The Pugnax kidnapped her when she got too close to the wall two weeks ago and she's been there ever since," she looked at the woman's face and then down at her belly, "Those Pugnax are monsters."

Sam's eyes had suddenly gone wide at the mention of the woman's name. Tsitsi. But that was—

She stepped forward and bent her knees slightly, clapping her hands twice. Tsitsi did the same. Then Sam placed a hand over her belly.

"It's a girl," she told her, trying to keep the emotion from her voice. She could feel mistiness in her eyes and tried not to let it show too much. "She's going to be brilliant, too. More than brilliant," Sam lifted a hand and wiped at the single tear that slid down her cheek, "She's going to save my life."

Tsitsi's eyes widened at Sam's words. "What is your name?" she asked softly.

"Can't tell you that, I'm afraid," she gave a small chuckle, "Can tell you this though—call her Sally."

"What?" the woman asked.

Sam smiled kindly. "Your baby. Call her Sally. She'll like it, I promise."

Tsitsi nodded sincerely. "I will," she told her.

"We should get going," the Doctor said, nodding to Clara as a Fugax guard appeared to take Tsitsi from her and back to her family.

"Hold on, what about me?" Alex stepped forward again, "I'm kind of stranded since my vortex manipulator broke."

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Oh, some things never change, do they?"

He grabbed Alex's arm, whipping out his sonic screwdriver and pointing it at the piece of equipment in questions. "I _know _you're just going to break it again later on…" the Doctor muttered as he worked.

"Setting 16B?" Sam inquired.

The Doctor looked up at her and grinned. "Very good, Sam," he praised her, "Might just have to get you one of these in the future."

Sam positively beamed at this.

The job was done in just under fifteen minutes, and the Doctor noted to himself that this was a new record as far as fixing Jack's vortex manipulators were concerned. "Right!" he clapped his hands loudly, looking at Clara and Sam, "Come on, you two, that's one adventure nicely wrapped up!"

Sam sighed. "I didn't even do anything," she muttered.

"You were mortally injured on your first trip," Clara said lightly, "I reckon that at least gets you some sort of stamp of recognition in the Doctor's book. I mean, who gets themselves into so much trouble on their first go?!"

A name popped into the Doctor's head, though he didn't say it out loud. Same person who'd gotten herself kidnapped and involved with a plot by the Gelth for world domination on her second go…

Alex cleared his throat and Sam turned to look at him. "So," he gave Sam a grin, but there was an underlying sadness in his eyes, "I guess this is goodbye?"

"Oh, don't say that," Sam smiled, feeling a small lump rising in her throat as well, "I mean, you being a Time Agent and me being a time traveller, both of us running the entire time, you never know. I reckon we'll see each other again."

"Yeah," he nodded half-heartedly, taking both her hands, "Of course we will."

They looked at each other for a moment, staring and smiling. Then, Alex started to lean in. Sam moved forward, too, as her pulse started racing and her eyes closed in contentment for the kiss that would soon follow.

That kiss never came.

"Oi!" the Doctor exclaimed, pushing the two of them apart. He shoved Sam to Clara's side and fixed Alex with a stern expression, "None of that," he waved a finger at him, "Not with Sam."

Alex blushed.

The Doctor looked at the appearance of colour on the young man's cheeks incredulously. Was he actually _blushing_? Captain Jack Harkness, blushing for having been caught trying to kiss a girl?

Blimey, this must be early days for him.

Alex coughed awkwardly, looking at Sam over the Doctor's shoulder. "'Til next time Sam," he said, throwing her a small smile.

Sam returned the smile easily. "Looking forward to it."

This caused Alex's smile to widen into a grin and the Doctor to look at the exchange between the two in dismay. What exactly had he gotten himself into by taking this specific companion along with him?

With one last look at Sam, Alex typed some unknown coordinates into his manipulator and flashed out of existence.

The group stood for a second watching the spot where the Time Agent had disappeared, before the Doctor ushered them all in the direction of the TARDIS.

Into the TARDIS, out of trouble, he kept telling himself.


End file.
